The Twitter account USTGirlProblems has received a great deal of attention for its tweets about the female population at St. Thomas. The account’s two authorized users, who asked to remain anonymous, started tweeting on Oct. 24. Since then, the users have tweeted about free shots at Tiffany Sports Lounge, curing hangovers with the cafeteria’s cheesy eggs and dieting to look skinny before Thanksgiving break.
Junior Tina McCabe is a resident adviser, and said she has read some offensive tweets concerning her job.
“The USTGirlProblems’ tweets are really reflective of the stereotype at St. Thomas,” McCabe said. “And honestly, it’s really offensive, and it makes our school look really bad.”
Other students agree with McCabe. Senior Brianna Donohue thinks “the account negatively portrays girls here at St. Thomas, and we’re not all like that.”
But not everyone agrees. Junior Steven Thyken said he likes reading the tweets.
“They’re meant to be funny, and I find them hilarious,” Thyken said. He added that students are taking the remarks too seriously.
Peter Breuch, director of marketing communication, said the university is aware of the account.
“There’s a group of us who are working on institutional social media,” Breuch said. “We keep our eyes open to things that relate to the institutional brand and messaging.”
Breuch and Kate Metzger, associate director of news service, said the university came across USTGirlProblems a couple weeks ago. In a message that consisted of less than 140 characters, St. Thomas directly messaged the users stating: “’You are using UST’s intellectual property. You don’t have consent and are directed to immediately cease and desist using UST’s property.”
The anonymous USTGirlProblems users interpreted the message to mean that St. Thomas was “asking us to shut down our Twitter because our name includes UST.” They later realized it was because their profile picture was the university’s logo or “intellectual property,” as St. Thomas put it.
“We weren’t upset about it, just a bit confused at first. All of the fuss over it actually ended up getting us more followers,” one of the owners of USTGirlProblems said.
The users have since changed their profile picture to a donkey riding a bicycle. Breuch jokingly said, “Maybe they’re with the democratic party?”
Metzger said a student tweeted the university’s account asking why St. Thomas asked USTGirlProblems to rid their account.
Metzger tweeted back immediately: “We’re not asking them to take the stream away at all. They’re free to tweet as long as they want, but if you’re going to use the university logo, you need to ask permission and follow the parameters that we have just because we need to protect ourselves.”
The university has also come across other accounts such as USTBroProblems, TommieProblems, BennieProblems and USTPublicSafety. Metzger said that USTPublicSafety is also not affiliated with the university.
“We’re situated in this neighborhood where people who live near the university have interactions with Public Safety and could come across the Twitter account and potentially think that is representing the office of Public Safety here,” she added.
USTGirlProblems’ account users said they would tweet that they are not affiliated with St. Thomas if that is what the university wants. Still, they believe their tweets are not detrimental to the school’s reputation.
“We’re really just joking around and poking fun of the reputation that UST already has. That reputation is already established, whether or not it is a positive one,” she said. “We exaggerate the stereotypes of our reputation just to be comical.”
Geena Maharaj can be reached at maha8007@stthomas.edu.
USTBroProblems…made me laugh. The thing is, stereotypes exist for a reason, and it’s okay to laugh about it once in a while.
I think it’s important to be able to laugh about ourselves. We can all read these tweets and relate to at least one of them. Personally, I find @USTgirlproblems a great source for a quick laugh to relieve some stress.
I agree with Collin. USTGirlProblems tweets are meant to be funny and they ARE funny. It is clear that are not meant to be an accurate and full depiction of St. Thomas girls. Sometimes it is good to laugh at ourselves.
I agree with you guys. They are funny, much more funny than USTBroProblems, and I can relate to some, or at least I can think of someone who can relate :) I’ve hash tagged and tweeted at USTGirlProblems before. It’s a good laugh. I’m just trying to look at it from a outsider perspective and in that sense, the tweets can be offensive. Gotta understand both worlds. Tweet on.
The posts can appear humorous until you realize what people laugh at and shrug off as stereotypes actually reflect serious problems like lust, promiscuity, immodesty, alcohol abuse, etc. that plague many college students, women especially.
Ryan, sign me up for all of the above.
Everyone who has commented thus far is right…the tweets are funny and are meant to be. However, I do find it disconcerting how accurate many of these stereotypes are…I have personally heard things very similar to these tweets said on campus daily (the same being true for BroProblems). The Twitter accounts are funny. Seeing the stereotypes reflected in real life is disheartening.
If the tweets are “really reflective of the stereotype at St. Thomas” and you’re concerned then maybe St. Thomas is the problem, not a couple girls and their Twitter account. Nice article Geena.
Ryan, I tend to think the reason it might appear that women are more plauged by promiscuity than men are, is just in virtue of the fact that women are held to higher standard on this front, e.g., she’s a slut (clearly negative implicature), vs. he’s a pimp (usually meant as a compliment, applicable to males with similar sexual histories as women that are disparaged). And actually, I think there’s a similar argument to be made for all the issues you list.
Granted, to fall prey to the double standard and say that a male being promiscuous means he’s more of a man (quite the contrary) would be wrong, but that’s not to say that promiscuity, or any of the issues I listed, are any less of a serious problem for either sex. My comment could have omitted the “women especially” part, the point was to call attention to the fact that what people shrug off as stereotypes are actually serious problems running rampant on college campuses.
My comment, as such, wasn’t meant to dispute that– merely, the inclusion of “women especially.”
WHY IS THIS ARTICLE ON THE FRONT PAGE? The UN just bombed Pakistan, and we are worried about USTGIRLPROBLEMS?! Get it together.
First of all it was NATO, not the UN (BIG difference). Also, it was a strike, not a bombinb (semanitcs I know, but bombing has different connotations). TommieMedia is for reporting on all things St. Thomas, and unless they have a reporter on the ground in Pakistan, I think its unrrealistic to expect them to report on any worldy issues, foreign or domestic, outside of St. Thomas