Centre News

Fifty Centre students make up the College’s Twitter Team,
using social media to promote the debate. These students use
the hashtag #centrevpdebate to share news, pictures and
comments, and all tweets using this hashtag are fed
automatically onto the Centre Debate website.

With the 10.11.12 Vice Presidential Debate at Centre College right around the corner, the College is giving its students an opportunity to participate in the hype.

About fifty students have volunteered to be part of the Twitter Team, a group that uses social media to promote the debate. These students are using the hashtag #centrevpdebate to share news, pictures and their own comments about the excitement. All tweets using this hashtag are fed automatically onto the Centre Debate website.

“We use the hashtag #centrevpdebate so that any tweets about the Debate are easily accessible for any interested person, even if they don’t have a Twitter account,” says C.J. Donald ’14. “Using Twitter to generate interest has allowed the entire campus to instantaneously share our general excitement with the world.”

“We want to give the world a chance to see the 2012 Vice Presidential Debate from a student’s point of view,” says Laura Pritchard, Centre’s assistant director of communications for PR and marketing. “We want the media, Centre students who are abroad, alumni, prospective students and others to get to join the conversation about the Debate, and our Twitter ambassadors are helping us facilitate that conversation.”

Because of this social media project, Centre College is able to give the public a play-by-play, or perhaps tweet-by-tweet, documentation of the Debate story as it unfolds. They are also able to encourage those beyond the Twitter Team to generate and sustain the buzz.

So far, the project has been a huge success. Some students have been so active in their contributions that they have been named Twitter Team All-Stars. And while Centre is privileged to have such support and enthusiasm from the students, the students also seem to be enjoying the project.

“I think one of the best things about being a Debate tweeter is that it is forcing me to get really involved and interested in the election,” says Danielle Ryan ’13. “This is the first time I have really explored my political views and found out what I stood for. I’ve enjoyed this experience immensely and can’t imagine a better way to spend my senior fall.”

Alisha Russell ’16, who has been actively tweeting the changes campus has been undergoing, mirrors these ideas.

“Its so rewarding when people I know, or even people I don’t know, message me and say how great my campus looks,” she says.

Centre also updates through the official College Facebook page, which they invite people to like at facebook.com/centre. They also encourage the community to tweet their own Debate excitement at twitter.com/CentreC. For more about the Vice Presidential Debate on 10.11.12, visit Centre’s Debate website here.

Have comments, suggestions, or story ideas? E-mail elizabeth.trollinger@centre.edu with your feedback.

Centre College, founded in 1819, is a nationally ranked liberal arts college in Danville, Ky. Centre will host its second Vice Presidential Debate on 10.11.12, and remains the smallest college in the smallest town ever to host a general election debate. For more, click here.