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UNM can now follow its president on Twitter.
UNM President Robert Frank said he manages his own Twitter account to reach out to the campus community. Frank said he wants to use social media to help spread awareness about campus-related issues.
“I want to use it to try to relate more to the University community and use it to get the message out about cutting-edge trends at the University that I want students to pay attention to,” he said. “So if we could get them to pay attention, then it’s a win for us.”
Frank, who registered under the Twitter handle “@Lobo_Pres,” said it’s common for university presidents to communicate with people in their communities through the social media site. He said he browses other presidents’ Twitter accounts and models his tweets on theirs.
But Frank said he won’t bore the campus with tweets. He said he only tweets when it’s in the interest of students.
“I use them … to say what important things are happening here that we want to talk about in the UNM community and what issues we want our students and faculty to be thinking about,” he said.
Cinnamon Blair, the interim chief marketing and communications officer, said Frank wanted to establish a Twitter account himself so that he could talk to students.
“He comes up with ideas,” Blair said. “It was really something that he wanted to do. He wanted to communicate in a way that students were communicating. He felt it was important.”
The president has more than 500 followers on Twitter, Blair said. She said she helps the president interact with the community through social media to increase his followers.
“I think it’s going to have to be one of the things which he starts feeling comfortable with,” Blair said. “We’ve talked about how he should start looking at followers and tweet at them and see what other people are up to.”
UNM student Franceska Alexander said she is an avid user of social media and that she follows Frank on Twitter. She said the president’s Twitter account and other UNM Twitter accounts make it easier for her to stay updated about the University.
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“I think just posting about everything in general helps students know more about what’s going on campus,” she said. “I feel like students pay more attention to social media than they do bulletin boards and other stuff they might have on campus.”
Frank said because of the recent controversy surrounding a UNM professor who wrote discriminatory posts on Twitter, he said he is concerned about the effect of social media to the University’s reputation.
In early June, UNM professor Geoffrey Miller received negative reactions after bashing “obese Ph.D. applicants” tweeting that “if you don’t have the willpower to stop eating carbs, you won’t have the willpower to do a dissertation #truth.” UNM is currently investigating the incident.
But Frank said that despite the recent issue, he encourages the University community to engage in social media. He said the University is an environment where people should be able to express themselves openly.
“We’re about controversial thinking,” Frank said. “The University is about thinking thoughts and expressing them.”
