Students across campus started an outcry on social media Tuesday, Feb. 12 claiming that NKU Dining was blocking students on Twitter in order to prevent them from voicing their opinions on the department’s live Twitter feed.
Complaints of the blockings apparently started after sophomore sports business and marketing major Matt Hepner was blocked from the NKU Dining Twitter page after sending the tweet “@nkudining can we put napkins back on the table? AIN’T NOBODY GOT TIME TO WALK UP AND GET NAPKINS #retweet.”
NKU Dining responded to the complaints of the blockings via a Facebook status and tweet the following day.
“NKU Dining is a business page and we are not able to display comments with profanity. We still love to hear your comments good and bad!” the account said.
However, according to Hepner, there was nothing profane in any of the tweets he sent.
“Every Tweet that I saw had no curse words or profanity,” he said.
To add to the situation, Hepner admitted that he was not the only student blocked from giving feedback. According to Hepner, there are at least three other NKU students who were blocked from NKU Dining due to leaving their feedback.
One student, senior kinesiology and athletic training major Tom Gooding tweeted his thoughts on the situation. “@nkudining quit blocking everyone for bringing the student voice. You wanted it. Meal plans should cover meals not $5.49 plus your own cash,” he tweeted.
He was soon blocked.
Other students tweeted NKU Dining in what appeared to be an attempt to get blocked.
Junior English major Max Heckel tweeted, “This Pepsi is the tits. @nkudining.”
He soon tweeted again, “Nku Dining just blocked me. #success.”
However, NKU Dining did seem happy to receive and respond positively to other tweets.
“@kellimartinn Thanks for your comments! Placing napkins on the condiment stations was a sustainability iniative! We are saving the landills,” they said in response to one student’s comments demanding “napkins on tables and better freaking food.”
Overall Hepner was very disappointed with NKU Dining’s Twitter feed.
“Its horrible, not even just from a PR standpoint, but in respecting common courtesy,” he said. “The point of student feedback is to get the positive and the negative comments.”
Celeste Manning, NKU Dining marketing director declined to comment at the time of publication.
NKU Dining released their Live Twitter Table in the Student Union food court on Feb. 12, where the tweets containing the departments handle (@nkudining) were displayed.