10 minute read
NOT AFFILIATED
from DA February 2020
by Ammar Hussain, Caroline Cubbin design by Kritin Shanmugam photo by Lainey Harvey
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Sydney Thayer, co-president of Peer Leadership, works on a post to upload to the Peer Leadership Instagram account, a page dedicated to informing students regarding club events, meetings, and the peer leaders of the month. She puts the finishing touches on the post, making sure to double-check that all of the information is accurate and appropriate for the club audience. Anticipating the post being viewed by students at Hinsdale Central, she is careful to make sure that everything looks right. Thayer posts information pertinent exclusively to the club and its members, but regardless, she includes the words “a student-run account not affiliated with Hinsdale Central” in order to avoid trouble with the administration. In the past two years, a number of clubs, organizations, and activities at Central have started to include various iterations of the phrase “Not Affiliated With Hinsdale Central” in their Instagram account bios. While the accounts deal almost exclusively with events and programs occurring at Central, that phrase has become necessary due to an increase in regulations on D86 social media usage and an augmented level of concern surrounding liability issues. According to Dominick Maniscalco, Chief Human Resources Officer for D86, as of last year, all staff members are required to fill out a “Social Media Account Registration Form” should they wish to maintain a District 86 social media account. Instagram is not given as one of the options for permitted D86 social media, so no Instagram account can be officially affiliated with the school or D86. Maniscalco explained that the decision was made because Instagram’s privacy regulations do not allow for the District to archive posts or messages that have been deleted. Maniscalco explained that this function allowed for the district to become liable in the event of an incident, so D86 chose to purposefully exclude Instagram, in addition to Snapchat, from the list of permitted social media platforms. “There is a feature [on Instagram and Snapchat] that deletes all data within 10 seconds. Those were not forms of communication that we wanted to advocate for or have our staff engage [with],” Maniscalco said. While the new social media regulations are specifically intended for staff, they also affect the ability of clubs to use social media. The topic is not addressed in the Activities Code of Conduct, or the Student Activity
24 | Features Sharing the stuff our club does on Instagram makes it easier to find for leaders and freshmen, who can then see what Peer Leadership is all about,” Thayer said. In addition to affecting how clubs advertise and spread news and updates to members, the new regulations have also impacted how the school’s executive board pushes out information to the student body. Phillip previously used Instagram to promote different activities across the school, but after the regulations regarding Instagram were put in place, she abandoned the Instagram account and started using Twitter as an alternative. While Phillip can no longer manage an official Instagram account, the executive board has chosen to continue using nonaffiliated Instagram accounts to promote school-wide activities. Alex Ovan, social chair, is in charge of the Instagram account Red Devil Nation (RDN), which he uses to post updates to the student body regarding different spirit events and ways to support fellow students. RDN is passed down each year to the newly elected social chairs as a way to keep the student body informed and engaged. According to Ovan, students submit events and games that they would like to promote, and he posts the information on RDN. While the account has no official ties to Central, it has more than 2,000 followers, and according to Ovan plays a critical role in spreading information to the student body. Ovan also mentioned that recently he has become even more careful about what he posts in case of potential liability issues, even with the explicit non-affiliation in the account’s bio. “It’s a lot of over-thinking and thinking about the worst-case scenario,” Ovan said in regard to potential issues. “I have to Guidelines section of the Student Handbook, however, according to Sally Phillip, Activities Director, for a club to have an official social media account, the club sponsor must have full ownership of the account. Club leaders may also access and post as long as the sponsor can monitor activity. If a club wishes to have a social media account or website officially linked to Central, the sponsor must submit the registration form with the log-in information and stated purpose of the account, and then wait for approval. However, because staff are no longer permitted to have D86 Instagram accounts, clubs, too, cannot officially use Instagram. Maniscalco said that while there has been a lot of pushback from students and staff regarding the restrictions on Instagram, it was a decision that needed to be made. “Unfortunately, we could not support a social media forum that had the ability to raise data that we could not archive,” Maniscalco said. “We can’t take the chance if there is one issue that we cannot validate or provide evidence for; it was better to be safe than sorry.” Thayer uses the @hcpeerleadership Instagram account in conjunction with the other board members to provide updates to club members and spread information about upcoming events. Despite not being able to have an official Instagram account for the club, Thayer explained that the board made the decision to keep the account unofficially because they had already built a following and didn’t want to transfer to a different platform. In addition to Peer Leadership, many clubs — such as the Muslim Students Association, Christian Students Association — and athletic teams — such as boy’s golf, girl’s lacrosse, boy’s basketball, and boy’s baseball — all still have Instagram accounts which the students have decided to maintain without oversight from sponsors or coaches. While there are a number of other social media platforms that clubs are permitted to use, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Vimeo, Pinterest, and Hudl, many clubs have found student activity to be higher on Instagram. “We thought Instagram was something more people use and a platform where we could build a better community. “The age of social media has created a forum in which students and staff communicate in a way that they never had before.” Dominick Maniscalco
think, is this something as a student body that we will have to take responsibility for?” In addition to RDN, the executive board also manages the account @ hinsdaleseniors, which is geared specifically toward informing the Class of 2020 about senior-specific events and activities. Among those activities is Senior Tag. While there are more than 80 clubs and 35 sports teams that are regulated by the Activities and Athletic Departments, and School Code of Conduct, second-semester seniors across the nation also participate in Tag, an activity that is coordinated and organized completely outside of school. Almost 400 seniors at Central this year are participating in the competition, which assigns targets to students, who can be eliminated by water gun, Nerf gun, or washable marker. While the participants of the game are exclusively seniors at Central, because there is no staff oversight and the game is organized outside of school, the official rulebook of the game states that “Hinsdale Central High School is not affiliated with Senior Tag in any way.” This year, class President and Vice President, Lauren Hughes and Nick Moawad, are organizing the game. Tag was started at Central in 2014 and, according to Hughes and Moawad, has been passed down from each grade’s president and vice president to the following years as a way to make senior year more fun. By tradition, each year’s president and vice president pass down an email account with access to all of the resources necessary to organize the game to the following year’s president and vice president. Among those resources is the rulebook, to which new changes are made each year. “As time and culture have shifted, so have the rules of the game,” Hughes said regarding the changes. Senior Tag is generally known around the nation as “Senior Assassins,” but according to Hughes and Moawad, the name was changed in 2018 to Tag after concerns arose surrounding the game’s association with violence in the context of recent mass shootings. Because Tag has no direct affiliation to the school, Hughes and Moawad can choose to use the funds acquired from the game for any purpose they wish. Like previous years, however, they have chosen to contribute all excess money to senior prom. “We have a choice as to where the money goes, and we choose to use it on prom,” Hughes said. According to Phillip, each class board was previously responsible for fundraising for their own prom. Starting this year, post-referendum, Class Board no longer exists and so the duty to plan prom falls exclusively on the shoulders of the executive board. Hughes and Moawad explained that fundraising for prom is a large endeavor. “[Prom] felt sprung on us because like it has never been our responsibility, but I nonetheless think that we’ve done a “I think they’ve had to catch up and progress with the time. We’re trying to keep kids safe, and our sponsors and staff safe as well.” Sally Phillip that they will be creating and selling official merchandise very soon and plan to donate all proceeds to help cover the costs of prom. The owners have no obligation to donate the proceeds from their sales to prom since their account has no association to Central, however, they explained that they simply wish to help, and hope to raise more than $2,000. Every student interviewed expressed that the reason they choose to continue using explicitly non-affiliated Instagram accounts for their clubs and programs, and to spread information to their audiences is because they find the platform to be the easiest to use. “Everybody has Instagram [at Central],” one of the owners of Barstool said. “You can put something on your story, you can post, you can send someone a message, you can tag people. It’s very user-friendly.” Phillip explained that she also found her D86 Instagram account to be helpful. However, she said she understands why the new regulations were put in place. “I think they’ve had to catch up and progress with the time. We’re trying to keep kids safe, and our sponsors and staff safe as well,” Phillip said. That idea was corroborated by Maniscalco, who pointed toward a worldwide technological shift as the reason for new regulations. “The age of social media has created a forum in which students and staff communicate in the way that they never had before,” Maniscalco said. “Now more than ever, social media has just increased the form in which people are communicating. We just want to get it right, and we just want to give students an opportunity to do what they love to do, but we also want to give staff the ability to communicate with students in a safe way.” good job with fundraising, especially as student council,” Hughes said. According to Phillip, while the executive board holds a number of official prom fundraising events, they are free to fundraise in any manner they are able to. “We find various projects throughout the year [to fund prom]. They can be in school or out of school,” Phillip said. For that reason, even though Senior Tag is in no way affiliated with Central, the proceeds from the game are still able to subsidize the costs of prom. In addition to from Tag proceeds and official school events, senior prom will also be funded this year, in part, by the anonymous owners of the Instagram account @barstoolhchs. Barstool Hinsdale was created in September 2019 by two anonymous seniors who wished to bring the nationally-known Barstool to Central. Like club Instagrams, RDN, and Senior Tag, Barstool Hinsdale also makes it explicitly clear that they, too, are not affiliated with the school. Their bio states “Not Directly Affiliated with HCHS”. They explained that their account is meant to be an unofficial subsidiary of the national Barstool organization. The account was created originally with a focus on posting funny videos and publicizing the social aspect of Central student life, but according to the owners, has expanded to promote school spirit and events that various clubs and organizations are hosting. “If [students] want their clubs or events to be promoted, they can just send us something. They can send us as many videos as they want. [Our] main focus [going forward] is to promote school spirit,” one of the owners said. The owners of Barstool Hinsdale said
