A student opens their Instagram feed. Instead of scrolling through pictures of friends on vacation and their favorite college sports teams highlight videos, they see club posts about meetings and high school sports teams about games coming up.
Last year, a new club, the Bexley Anti-Racism Project, wanted to find a way to spread the word and to reach students. They found the best way to achieve their goal was to create social media accounts so they could reach a large portion of the student body and community.
The girls soccer coach hired Bunker as the JV coach, and also wanted her to take over the Instagram account.
‘Most likely to come back to coach’, Maggie Bunker, a 2017 Bexley High School Alumni, did exactly what her graduating class predicted she would. Bunker is the head JV-A coach for the girls soccer team, and runs the girls soccer Instagram account.
“He knew I had more experience with social media because I had grown up with it, and I enjoy taking pictures, so it was a perfect fit,” Bunker said.
Other school organizations utilizing social media platforms such as Instagram to relay information about their program, get students excited about events coming up and have fun posting with their program’s participants, are: the student section leaders, the Bexley Anti-Racism Project and Bexley Theatre Arts.
Students showed an interest in following a BARP Instagram account, seeing their content and learning more about the club, so BARP decided to create an Instagram, junior Megan Cooper said.
Cooper said the main purpose of the Instagram account is to inform students on when the club meetings are, events they are holding and important, relevant events happening in Ohio.
“We’ve been giving out information based on current events that are going on in Ohio and specifically the house bills…that are in the process of hopefully not being passed regarding education,” Cooper said.
BARP has a Facebook account and Twitter as well as Instagram, and the content is consistent with each social media account, Cooper explained.
All BARP accounts are controlled by social studies teacher Anna Schottenstein, but its members tell her what to post, Cooper added.
Unlike BARP, the Bexley Theatre Arts program is solely student-run and only uses one social media platform, Instagram.
The co-communications chairs of the Bexley Theatre program, senior Tovah Blumenfeld and junior Jillian Savage, manage the program’s Instagram account.
Blumenfeld explained that the purpose behind creating the theatre Instagram account was to provide the students and community with information in a different manner.
“The Bexley Theatre Arts program decided to make an Instagram to increase community outreach to both students at Bexley High School and people outside of school,” Blumenfeld said.
On @bextheatre, there are backstage takeovers, informational graphics about auditions and boomerangs, Blumenfeld said.
“It does a really great job of putting out the information for all to see, especially when other people in the program repost the graphics,” Blumenfeld said.
Senior Ivy Simpson said she created the @bexstudentsection Instagram account this year, along with fellow senior student section leaders Sydney Tyler, Katie Jude and Grace Heilman.
Cheer coach Brooke Wojcik had the idea of creating student section leaders to increase students’ excitement about football games and increase participation in the game themes, Simpson said.
She explained that the student section leaders’ Instagram account was created to get information out about football games coming up and to get students excited about the football season.
“On the stories, we post fun pictures of the football players,” she said. “We decided to do it just to get the word across and to hype everyone up for games.”
The student section Instagram is a collaborative effort, and everyone involved contributes equally to the account, Simpson explained.
Although junior Ava Foster does not have Instagram, she said she still receives important information about school clubs through her friends, the club’s canvas page and email.
“It’s weird because people will talk about what someone posted on a school club Instagram, but I don’t know what’s going on because I don’t have Instagram, and I don’t know what people post about,” Foster said.
