Student Run Social Media Pages Aim to Bring the Campus Together

By Bryan Davis

On various platforms across the social media landscape, multiple City University of New York “secrets” pages have been operated by anonymous people, who wish to talk about things they’ve seen on their campuses that wouldn’t be talked about on an official school account.

An Instagram account called “Brokelyn College” has shown ceiling leaks, malfunctioning sinks, and broken toilets at Brooklyn College. The account has been around for the past several years, and has accumulated over 1,200 followers. Other CUNY related school accounts have taken after “Brokelyn College” by showing what’s wrong with their campuses. On Facebook, “CUNY Confessions” serves as an anonymous outlet for CUNY related problems, with students sharing any story or life changing experiences they’ve seen on their campuses.

“We understand that sometimes communication within the CUNY system can be a long and drawn out process,” they said. “By posting about any problems publicly online, it would inform the general public about our situation and hopefully force CUNY officials to take action.” Of course, this has put them in hot water with Facebook, but with strong public interest and people share their stories, they will keep going.

Recently an Instagram account called “Overheard Brooklyn College” was created. The account owner, who asked to remain anonymous, stated that they were inspired by “Overheard Baruch.”

 “The ‘overheard’ accounts are about funny people-watching. But it’s also a way to understand what the student body cares about and what they’re talking about.” They said that “Brokelyn College” inspired them as well, as they unified students around a common issue: maintaining our school’s infrastructure. 

“That account in combination with activism by courageous students was able to solve most of the infrastructure issues that impacted students daily. The school had the 90 day fix-it challenge and also developed the Navigator app to report infrastructure issues on campus.”

They also added, “This account addresses an issue that isn’t as pronounced or noticed by all students. That issue would be a unified school community  at a commuter school. BC students, and CUNY students in general, are disconnected because of the nature of how commuter schools/schools with a high rate of part time or employed students operate.”

Although it’s in its early stages, “Overheard Brooklyn College” already has 38 Instagram followers and hope to grow enough to unify the Brooklyn College student body. The page runner said that in the future they want to start holding events based on BC student body input. They wanted this account to become known to the campus so that it could connect students at BC.