Looks like the geniuses who run UC Davis never Googled the words “Streisand Effect.”
After a police officer pepper-sprayed UC Davis students in a widely reported 2011 incident, the California university contracted with SEO consultants for $175,000 (or maybe more) to scrub unfavorable online items about the incident and boost online reputations of both the university and Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi.
The Sacramento Bee reported on the SEO scandal, and based their story on documents newly released in response to requests filed last month under the California Public Records Act.
In January 2013, UC Davis contracted a Maryland firm, Nevins & Associates, for a six-month contract that paid $15,000 a month. Nevins was the first of many “reputation management firms” paid off by the university administrators. And that payment was just the start.
I never thought I’d say I was glad I didn’t choose to attend UC Davis, but I’m glad I’m not an alumnus of UC Davis.
FYI, if you are an alum of Davis and you’re ashamed of their behavior but not sure what you can do, here’s a thing. Speaking as someone who works in fundraising, one of the very loudest ways to get the attention of school administration is to tell them why you won’t be giving them any money, ever. Tell them you don’t want your money going to scrub images of their shame off the internet, and you don’t want to pay the salaries of the people who caused it. Don’t tell them to take you off their solicitation list – just tell them, every single time they solicit, through mail or email or by phone, that you won’t be giving them any money and you won’t be engaging with the school in any way (engagement is a new metric and many schools measure fundraising success in part by how many people attend events, tweet positively about the school, et cetera).
Tell them you’re ashamed of your school and that you’ll tell every alum you meet. And this doesn’t just go for Davis – if your school pulls this kind of shenanigans, tell them you won’t give them money, you won’t engage with them, and you will tell everyone you went to school with why. Tell them every time they ask you for money you’ll tweet about their shame, or you’ll find someone on linkedin who went to your school and tell them not to give either.
Some schools have a “lost generation”, a few years to a decade where something they did so appalled or traumatized the students that there’s just no way that most of them will ever donate or support the school. Most schools would do anything to get that generation back. And if they see an impending “lost generation” of alumni because they chose to scrub these images instead of owning their mistakes, well. It can’t fix what’s broken, but it may prevent it from happening again.
Unis really do depend on not just the financial support, but the social support of alums. The bigger the uni, hilariously, the more this is the case.
Alums are basically free advertising. Invaluable free advertising. They are the most important part of reputation. Harvard is what Harvard is in no small part BECAUSE THAT’S HOW PEOPLE THINK OF HARVARD.
Kimchi and Justice 