As the most recent Student Association election came to a close, the creators of the controversial gwheadlines Instagram account announced that they would no longer post, deleting the account shortly after voting ended for the election. The account had become well known at GW for its satirical posts, usually spoofs of The Hatchet at the expense of the administration and the SA and stories showing anonymous messages about SA members. While some of the satire directed at the administration was funny, like a fake headline reading “Leblanc called out for only being photographed with white students,” the account’s criticism of students amounted to rumors and sensationalism targeting SA members whom we often forget are members of our campus community.
The SA is no stranger to criticism. Members are often the butt of jokes for their self-seriousness in treating a relatively weak student government as though it’s “The West Wing.” The SA’s dramatics were highlighted in the recent situation where a procedural debate about senate seats representing freshmen, which is likely not an issue for most students, turned into several weeks of publicized drama and bickering over constitutionality. While gwheadlines, like many students, claimed to be annoyed by the favoring of melodrama over focusing on issues integral to the student body, the account played into the self-importance of the SA, treating its inner workings as bonafide political drama and its members as national politicians. It is true that members of the SA are public figures – they are elected to their positions and, on occasion, make decisions that impact the student body. But they are also our peers.
There is a world of difference between publicizing satire about national or local elected officials who make decisions that affect thousands of people daily and circulating the same about someone in your economics class. Brutal satire targeting national officials who have a massive platform and the capability to destroy countless lives is warranted. Similar mockery of a peer is not. There is no issue with student activists demanding SA candidates to do better in prioritizing issues related to sexual assault on campus. There is an issue with gwheadlines insinuating that SA Vice President Kate Carpenter was a supporter of former President Donald Trump for being photographed with her mask down at a men’s basketball game. While a student leader is certainly subject to criticism for failing to abide by the University’s mask mandate that was in place at the time, this type of satire is lazy, mean-spirited and does not deal with the reality of the incident. It instead invents a more interesting idea to make the subject, Carpenter, look worse. Plenty of jokes could have been made about the situation without calling a peer a bigot.
The aforementioned post is just one example of how gwheadlines passed off exaggerations as “satire” to make other students look as bad as possible. A few weeks ago, GW Students Against Imperialism released a statement on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which opposed any NATO involvement, including sanctions, in the conflict and categorized the West’s treatments of refugees from Ukraine and Middle Eastern countries as based in racism. There were aspects of that statement that were extremely controversial and debatable, like the framing of the conflict as regional between two equally matched forces. But, instead of actually commenting on the substance of the statement that showed opposition to NATO involvement but no support of Russia, gwheadlines released a “satirical” post that accused SAI of supporting Russia and blaming NATO alone for the invasion.
The post influenced the opinion of some students who left comments calling the members of SAI “depraved” and saying they “couldn’t believe they breathed the same air” as members of the organization. It is extremely concerning that students’ opinions of their peers are influenced by misinformation. Instead of creating a productive conversation about policy related to Ukraine, gwheadlines’ smear of SAI as Putin supporters, a pretty indefensible position, incited the free use of vitriolic language against members of the organization, more so than the original statement itself arguably warranted.
While most of gwheadlines’ satire at least addressed controversial actions by the SA, like the first-year senate seat kerfuffle and the hesitancy to release a statement that called for the firing of professors Maria Matta and Alicia Bitler, it would also attack people that the account ownership personally disliked. In its last post before shutting down, the account called then SA vice presidential candidate Yan Xu’s smile “evil” and accused him of not funding student organizations he supposedly didn’t like as finance committee chair. The post again had no actual proof behind it and should be viewed as bullying, attacking someone for a perceived quality instead of anything they have actually done. In fact, much of the supposed “tea” that came out about SA members was through unverified anonymous messages that were shared on gwheadlines’ story. Some of these messages supposedly came from members of the SA and accused prominent members of various wrongs. Last month, gwheadlines posted anonymous messages on its story, alleging that then-SA presidential candidate Dasia Bandy of racism and homophobia. We have no way of knowing if these messages are actually from students involved in the SA like gwheadlines claimed, or – considering the SA’s infamous culture of petty infighting – if they were just bad-faith attacks on students who were seen as easy targets for a quick laugh.
In its self-righteous crusade to expose the SA, gwheadlines made the same mistake as the organization it lampooned – taking itself too seriously. Instead of using satire to make positive change in the SA, gwheadlines opted to air its personal grudges toward individual members on a public platform and call it satire. Spreading unsubstantiated and sensationalized rumors didn’t actually hold anyone accountable. Instead, the publicized petty bullying could make members of the SA more resistant to valid criticism if they feel it stems from misinformation and spite.
Students can certainly conjure the wherewithal to be funny without actively bullying people. After all, pages like GW Affirmations manage to do that every single day. When students cross that line, campus becomes a nastier and less harmonious place.
Kara Vecchione, a senior majoring in political science, is an opinions writer.
