Headlines splashed across Instagram posts with an accompanying foghorn logo in the corner don’t announce breaking news — they announce satirical takes on campus goings-on.

Created in May 2024 by four friends, Aiden Milne, Matthew DeBellis, Emmy Ly and Will O’Connell, the GW Foghorn is an unofficial, student-run Instagram page that has built a following of more than 1,500 students through its sharp, satirical takes on campus life. Posting multiple times a week, the account skewers everything from the Student Government Association and University officials to life living in residence halls and sports, offering a humorous lens on the everyday absurdities of life at GW.

GW master’s student Milne, founder of Foghorn and its editor-in-chief, said the account was born out of inspiration from the University of California, Berkeley’s the Free Peach, which he found “funny” for its satirical takes on school culture. Using the Free Peach as a guiding light, he said GW Foghorn made its first post last year with the headline “Breaking: GW Administration horrified to find students continue to use their First Amendment rights” after students pitched tents outside of University President Ellen Granberg’s house the night after the Metropolitan Police Department cleared the pro-Palestinian encampment in University Yard. 

He said the four co-founders met by all being “tangentially” involved in the SGA and through social media, and he was motivated to start the Foghorn after another satirical news Instagram page, the Axe  — which has now gone defunct — was “dissing” students who had taken part in the pro-Palestinian encampment. One Axe post, which included a headline reading “BREAKING: Actions Have Consequences,” after MPD cleared the U-Yard encampment in May 2024, was filled with comments rebuking their commentary, like “not funny didn’t laugh” and “bad take.”

“You can bring light to injustices with comedy, and I think we saw that there was an opportunity for a new page on campus and especially because the other one wasn’t doing a lot in general, so we decided to fill the gap,” Milne said.

In addition to running the Foghorn, Milne also runs GW Propaganda, an Instagram account that turns GW-related events into propaganda-style posters. He said the account is difficult to maintain as sourcing enough poster material to match a variety of events was challenging, which has made him enjoy posting on the Foghorn because of its simpler format — a headline over an image — which makes it much easier to produce satirical content consistently.

The inspiration from the name, he said, came from looking at the options when GW decided to change its moniker, being drawn to “blue fog” and ultimately deciding upon Foghorn as it is something that creates noise — similar to how news outlets make a lot of noise with public reaction. He said Foghorn also takes inspiration from The Hatchet, using a similar color scheme and logo design. 

In terms of content, he said, the account leans towards basing coverage off of events on campus, though he said members have been trying to move towards the culture of GW with light-hearted humor. Milne said there is no scheduled day or time the account makes posts, but instead they workshop ideas over text.

After officials installed temporary fencing around U-Yard just days after MPD cleared the encampment — and later announced plans to make the barriers permanent — Foghorn published a June 2024 post with the headline “Campus Life: Fencing Around U-Yard Permanent. GW Assures That Pandas Are Coming Soon.” The piece criticized officials’ choice to erect permanent fences around U-Yard.

“They’re just things we see about student and campus culture that we can make light of and point out like ‘Oh, it’s kind of ridiculous. Like, what’s going on here?’” he said.

Milne said he wants to “institutionalize” the Foghorn before he graduates from GW in May to make it more official, which he said he is attempting to do by advertising membership on GW Engage and at organization fairs to keep it running after the current members graduate.

“My main concern is just this page continuing after I graduate, especially because I do so much for it, and I worry about the next generation,” Milne said.

DeBellis, one of the account’s four founders, said he joined Milne in the Foghorn after being sick for seven months and needing a form of entertainment. He said accounts like the GW Axe were full of “terrible takes,” and he wanted to create content with more humor that students could actually relate to — from Granberg’s bob haircut to the emergency alarms that constantly go off in residence halls. 

“Most of what our content has been in the past, like, two months has just been like GW, randomly exploding because I’m sure all of us have gotten these notifications,” DeBellis said. 

DeBellis said it has been challenging to move the group of students beyond an Instagram account into a recognized organization, but they are working towards creating a website this year. He said he hopes the seven other members of the organization who are not on the editorial staff but are staffers — called “subcontrators” who apply through a Google Form and create the captions of posts — take the organization into their own hands and make it official when the current staff graduates in May. 

DeBellis said creating headlines is a collaborative process among members. He explained that he bases his pitches on current campus events — such as emails Granberg sends to the community — and then adds a humorous twist. Once a headline is finalized, he said, members work together to come up with captions.

“Not everything has to be depressing,” DeBellis said. “There’s no other description for it than that. I view Foghorn as an outlet to say the most absurd things, and hopefully they land.”

Ly — a senior and one of the account’s founding members — said she helps create captions and collaborate with headlines, taking a more “relaxed” role. She said she sees the account as “poking fun” at institutions at GW, like the administration and the SGA, as well as campus culture, centering the humor around campus happenings, not as much political commentary.

“I think humor should be used to highlight some kind of social commentary that you would prefer to change or something that you have a disagreement with and you want to highlight why that is, but I don’t think it should be used to bully people or get out of hand in a personal capacity,” Ly said.

Diana Anos contributed reporting.