PNW’s story is getting told on Snapchat, but some students are not sure that is altogether a good thing.
“I personally think the PNW Snapchat can be beneficial for making new friends and learning about things going on around campus,” said senior Alivia Godfrey, a Criminal Justice major. Godfrey believes PNW’s Snapchat can help to build a sense of community.
“I think it gives a better way to connect to other students, and it makes it easier for people who are shy to make friends,” she said. “It does connect you to more events at school … Before joining the Snapchat story I didn’t know about half of the things happening on campus.”
A study by Education Dynamics found that 48% of college students use Snapchat daily. The platform is the fifth most popular messaging app in the world.
On the other hand, Godfrey is concerned that anyone can post anything on the PNW Snapchat story.
“I think it should be monitored by someone who can take action…to something going on in the story that is either harmful or against school policy,” she said.
Her main concern is student safety and the possibility of posting threats.
“There is a lot of stuff on there that should be monitored because of incidents where schools have been on lockdown,” she said. “I think it would be beneficial to have a PNW staff and or school cop monitor it.”
Sophomore English major Elizabeth Colby agrees that someone should be monitoring the Snapchat story.
“It would be nice to have some type of monitoring by school staff so students would have more relevant information, and maybe have better connections with other students,” she said. “After viewing the PNW Snapchat story, I thought it might have been a platform for students to connect and share similar interests and majors but it really wasn’t.
“It was mostly just students posting random things in their day that aren’t relevant to every student,” said Colby. “It seemed to only be full of photos of irrelevant things that don’t pertain to every student.”
Godfrey volunteered that the one particular topic that she would like to see less of is student parties.
“I would change the fact that people post their parties,” she said. “I think if they want something where people just talk specifically about parties they should make their own.”
