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The Boston College Athletics Department is teaming up with the University’s Center for Student Formation for a new student social media campaign — including undergraduate-produced videos — that encourages improved sportsmanship at on-campus athletic events.
“No one knows a BC student better than another BC student,” says Associate Athletics Director for External Relations James Di Loreto, who is working with Vice President for University Mission and Ministry Jack Butler, SJ, and Student Formation Center Director Michael Sacco to implement the plan.
“We want to look at how we can get students involved with tackling some of the challenges that we face relative to sportsmanship overall,” Di Loreto says. “It’s not just a BC issue, it’s a universal challenge. We want to get students engaged in helping us plan the creative part of this. We are going to invest in and support initiatives created by students and make a campaign around inspirational videos about what it means to be a BC student.”
Earlier this week, student filmmaker Sean Casey ’12 and his brother Kevin ’04 produced a video link that includes the words of then-US Sen. John F. Kennedy’s commencement address at Boston College in 1956, when he urged the school’s graduates to be their best in every endeavor of their lives.
“The goal is for us to get creative and to have students get engaged in a competition to produce videos to highlight some of the things that happen on our campus,” Di Loreto says, “and to improve some of the ways that folks sometimes act at games.”
Di Loreto says more videos will be added to the website at the start of the spring semester and prizes will be awarded to students whose work best conveys the sportsmanship theme. Students will be encouraged to comment on the videos and share the links with others.
“Knowing that our target audience is students, we thought that having students putting the whole project together – with us advising and supporting them throughout – would be one of the better ways to make it successful,” Di Loreto says.