Boston College has once again expanded its social media presence, this time to the popular video platform, TikTok.
“One of our hopes is to highlight BC students and student life on campus,” wrote Senior Social Media Specialist Zanna Ollove in an email to The Heights. “We want people to get a feel for what life is like on the Heights and we hope that the BC TikTok account can be one of the ways to do that.”
BC’s TikTok account, @bostoncollege, boasts 163 followers and 14 videos at the time of publication with content that exhibits happenings on BC’s campus. One series, called “@BC,” covers campus-wide events that showcase the University’s student life and values, such as Stokes Set, the Student Involvement Fair, and Mass of the Holy Spirit.
The majority of videos are made by members of the BC Social Fellows, students who work to share the BC experience through various social media platforms. But as the platform develops, Ollove said they hope to receive community contributions to the TikTok account much like how the Instagram account often features user-generated content.
Some students have taken involvement into their own hands, responding to a BC TikTok that asks students to share their favorite spots on campus for entrance into a raffle for a BC Bookstore gift card.
Audrey Mitchell, MCAS ’24, won the raffle for her TikTok that featured Gasson Hall as her favorite spot on campus.
“It was so fun,” Mitchell said. “Gasson was already my favorite building and now I love it even more because I actually walked around it for fun and not class.”
Although she won a BC Bookstore gift card, Mitchell says she still would watch and make BC TikToks even if there was no prize.
“It feels like a little community [to] see other students’ experiences at the same school and see the places I know and love from a different perspective,” she said.
These challenges that encourage students to share what they love about BC with their followers also have the potential to reach prospective students.
“Younger students – freshmen and sophomores – told us that they watched a lot of TikTok videos created by college students during their decision process,” Ollove wrote. “Knowing that prospective students were getting a lot of information about colleges on TikTok made us even more interested in the channel.”
Because the COVID-19 pandemic pushed much of the annual college search for high school seniors onto social media, TikTok has expanded opportunities for these students to actually experience campus, according to Ollove.
“One of our goals is to create a space for prospective and accepted students to learn about BC, whether they can make it to campus or not,” Ollove wrote.
Featured Graphic by Olivia Charbonneau / Heights Editor
