Wednesday, September 23, 2015

SEC Presidents and Twitter

On one particularly dull day I looked up and wrote about how UGA's president and provost are not active on Twitter. That got me thinking. What about other SEC presidents? So let's take a look. In some schools the job is called chancellor, but I'm just gonna use president to keep life simple. It's my blog. I can do what I want.

Why should a prez be on Twitter? For a million good reasons, but mainly to reach out and connect with alumna, with students, and so on. Plus it's fun.

My search below is not complete nor is it comprehensive. I could easily have missed someone on Twitter, especially if they use a slightly different name. The ones I found tended to have an institutional name, like LSUPrez or some such. Which makes sense. In all, I found four five SEC schools presidents who I could find and identify on Twitter.

  • University of Alabama, Stuart R. Bell. I don't see a real account, but there is a parody account (or I hope to hell it is, otherwise Bama has more issues than even I realized).
  • University of Arkansas, Dan Ferritor (interim). No account found.
  • Auburn University, Jay Gogue. No account found.
  • University of Florida, W. Kent Fuchs (no, really). Finally, a real account. Not terribly active, with 274 tweets when I checked, but still good to see a prez up to technological speed.
  • University of Georgia, Jere Morehead. There's a dormant, hidden account. Pffft.
  • University of Kentucky, Eli Capilouto. Another prez who gets it, with 1,517 tweets. Good for you.
  • Louisiana State University, F. King Alexander. Ditto here, a Twitter user. Not heavy, but still online and posted just five hours earlier than my search. Excellent.
  • University of Mississippi, Morris Stocks (interim). There's one on Twitter, but it's locked up and I can't see that it's active. Only two followers.
  • Mississippi State University, Mark E. Keenum. No account found.
  • University of Missouri, Timothy M. Wolfe. Found someone by that name, but not the Mizzou prez. I had this wrong (thanks, careful reader). Mizzou's prez, R. Bowen Loftin, tweets from here.
  • University of South Carolina, Harris Pastides. Yup, he's there. Good for him. A lot of followers, not so many tweets.
  • University of Tennessee, Joseph A. DiPietro. No luck finding one.
  • Texas A&M University, Michael K. Young, Common name. Did not find him.
  • Vanderbilt University, Nicholas S. Zeppos, No luck.
It's a tough call on coolest SEC head's name, but I think I learn toward Eli Capilouto. Eli is just a cool name, though Zeppos as a last name has a lot going for it. And UF's prez name? I'm just gonna let that one slide because (1) I'm a UF grad and (2) at least he's on Twitter.

I'm open to any corrections if I missed someone.








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