Colleges Putting Their Own Spin on YouTube

Daniel Hostetler, left, and Alex Carroll of Georgetown in their YouTube video. (By Marvin Joseph -- The Washington Post)   |   Buy Photo

Such as: a badly leaking roof at Howard University, students setting off fireworks inside a dorm at U-Va., a fight at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, mock gang wars at Catholic University, allegations about criminal activity by the Old Dominion campus police.

Some schools ignore what's out there. But others watch the sites because they know how quickly an embarrassing clip can saturate.

Sometimes the student videos are good PR, maybe not exactly what the school would have chosen, but funny and appealing.

Like the back-flipping video, in which Carroll and Hostetler even climbed up the statue of the school's founder at the main entrance and leapt backward in jaw-dropping unison, backs arched, arms spread.

Within days, the video had been watched well over a thousand times. "Somehow, everyone at Georgetown has seen it," Carroll said. "All my friends from Texas have seen it." One told him, " 'Dude. I did not know your campus was that amazing,' " he said. "It's a cool way to show them that."

After watching the back-flip video, Will Harris, a freshman at the University of Mississippi, said he's no longer so sure he'll stay in the South for law school. "After seeing how pretty it is . . . I'll probably go look at a bunch of schools up there."

Old Dominion is adapting. It plans to translate the campus-tour videos into several languages, something it couldn't afford to do for printed materials, and have students from various countries bring their own style to the script, loosen it up.

On U-Md.'s YouTube channel, launched in January, there's a mix of institutional promotions (President C.D. Mote Jr. frosting some of the 50,000 cupcakes for Maryland Day) and student contest entries (a "Real World" take on life in a lab).

At Frostburg, public relations specialist Becca Ramspott said it made sense that when the university was trying to promote itself that the whole community, including students and alumni, could help.

Some entries showed students grabbing their boards on snow days or mountain biking down trails. One student used thousands of images to make a mesmerizing stop-motion video that jolts its way across campus. Another, "Ladies of Burg," has women hunched over a table playing "Go Fish" on a Friday night. "Frostburg, of thee I sing," featured a 1976 alum sitting in a chair, alternately speaking in a monotone and crooning.

Miller wants to make another video. He and his friends wrote the lyrics for a mock musical, he said, so one day, when the cafeteria's packed, they'll jump on a table and a friend who can't sing will belt out, "Frostburg, oh Frostburg, I love you, oh Frostburg."

It could be worse, right?