By Michael Walsh

March 23 marks the two year anniversary of the creation of the official Central Connecticut State University Twitter account. Unfortunately, May 12 marks the two year anniversary of the last time it was used.

Ten Tweets were made between March 23 and May 12 of that year, none of extreme or important value. It’s fair to say that the university’s first foray into social networking was a failure. Even its Facebook page is a lackluster place devoid of any discussion between students and faculty.

Social networking has become such an integral part of our society and it can’t be ignored. When used properly, Twitter can be a wealth of information and a beautiful place to crowd source. It provides news and information at the quickest speed it’s ever been provided and that’s something to think about as CCSU moves towards its goals of increased community involvement and the construction of a better campus.

Mark McLaughlin, CCSU spokesperson, referenced a lack of staff resources as one of the reasons why they were unable to keep @CCSU as current or engaging as it needed to be to truly be the official Twitter account of the university.

“We wanted to make available a variety of social networking utilities,” said McLaughlin. “And we’ve got several that are working and that are pretty well staffed. The problem was that I think we got started with things and we are really leanly staffed and it just became very difficult to keep up with current information.”

He did mention that they are in the process of determining how to better handle the account and make it valuable to their audiences. And I say it’s about time. The #CCSU hashtag has been an embarrassment of riches for some time now. A search of CCSU on Twitter yields results that would indicate that there is in fact a great deal of CCSU students, faculty, clubs and departments utilizing the social networking tool for their own personal or public reasons. But hardly ever is there rich discussion or the feeling of campus unity and involvement that Twitter is capable of bringing to a community. Most of the comments that end up having CCSU placed within them are frivolous or lousy, cheap jokes about how the university is failing in one area or another or how students just don’t want to attend that next class or do tonight’s homework.

“At the moment it’s an underutilized resource and we’re working on ways to staff it better so we can use it,” said McLaughlin. “There’s other things we want to create too along with a CCSU news Twitter account and we’re kind of in an early stage. Someone needs to be directed to monitor it and it just proved really, really difficult to do that.”

The Recorder has tried hard to make #CCSU something of worth. I’ve personally live Tweeted from Student Government Association coverage and each time I received zero feedback from students or professors on the actions of the senate. We as a newspaper have attempted to crowd source information from Twitter, asking students whether they think a smoking ban should happen on campus or if they’re happy with the most recent spring concert selections. The response? Again, nothing.

I’m not sure what exactly can be done to develop a sense of multimedia and online community between students, faculty and administration, but I do know it has to start with CCSU maintaining its own relevant and successful account. The inactive account currently has gained 320 followers and has been listed 22 times. If the account had actually been worth something and maintained to this day imagine what its numbers would be at now. We’ve all seen how powerful Twitter can be.

What’s most funny about the lack of an official university account is the fact that there are numerous departments around the university that do in fact try to utilize the technology. The athletics department (@CCSUBlueDevils) holds true to its description of daily sports updates, allowing students to stay current with their Blue Devils at home and on the road. @CCSUToday provides updates about on campus meetings, lectures and events, but its automated nature makes it not a place for discussion. The Student Activities/Leadership Department (@ccsusald) does a decent job at informing clubs of important dates and deadlines. Even career advising, the astronomy department and the inter residence council have Twitter accounts with updates made in the last month. There’s no reason why the official university-wide account can’t be brought back from the grave and made into something of true worth and value for this community.

McLaughlin said these developments probably won’t come to fruition until the end of the semester. Currently his department is making sure that there are specific policies in line associated with the publishing of content on the account and defined job responsibilities for whoever is given the duty of keeping the account up to date, as well as determining a process for overseeing the publishing of Tweets.

“It also requires a lot of oversight too in the sense that,” said McLaughlin. “It’s very useful to have one or two other people to review it to make sure it has no mistakes or to make sure there’s no misinterpretation. It represents the university so its critical to have that component of review.”

You can follow The Recorder on Twitter @TheRecorder and Michael Walsh on Twitter @MichaelCWalsh.