Social Media Blunder Points to Much Bigger Issue Off the Field

Arkansas communications department will be wise to tread lightly during Razorbacks' match-up with Kent State

Author:
Kent Smith
Publish date:
Sep 5, 2023 3:14 AM EDT

In this story:

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – As Arkansas fans begin to turn the page toward Kent State, the Razorbacks' next opponents, they will find themselves face-to-face with a meeting of generations. There they will find a cautionary tale not to be taken lightly.

We live in a world where entities from fast food chains to university athletic programs are looking for the next young social media whiz with quick wit. But for every youthful genius hidden behind the digital facade of Wendy's or Arkansas basketball, there's a long line of aspiring quipsters who put something up on the internet that made their company look bad and brought an abrupt end to their budding careers.

Often it's a lack of understanding of various cultures, but in this case, it comes down to a failure to educate. The post below has to be clicked upon to fully see, but what it reveals is an observer's response to a post made by the minds behind the Central Florida football Twitter account. In the midst of what turned out to be a 56-6 blowout of the Golden Flashes, an official tweet was sent showing former Ole Miss Rebel turned Knights quarterback John Rhys Plumblee on the phone accompanied by the words "Someone call the national guard."

In one sentence an almost equal reverberation of disgust and confusion split almost directly down generational lines across the Razorback footprint. Our older readers are probably appalled, while those in their 40s and below are most likely scratching their heads.

To bring everyone to a level playing field, on May 4, 1970, an event known as the Kent State Massacre took place. The Ohio State national guard was on campus to monitor students at the university who were protesting the expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia that day while casual observers stopped to look on from what they presumed was a safe distance between classes.

What ensued was a chaotic scene where national guard members reportedly knelt and fired into a crowd of students they had tried to disperse with tear gas multiple times earlier. The result was four people killed and nine more wounded. There were claims by guardsmen that they were fired upon by a sniper, but an investigation found that never happened.

The men also claimed they felt threatened by the students closing in on them and coming after them. However, all four who died except one were roughly 100 yards or more away. Of the nine wounded, only one was less than 37 yards away. Almost all the victims were between 75 to 250 yards away.

It was a dark day set into motion by a handful of vandals who took advantage of the atmosphere around a protest held earlier on May 1 and wild rumors that ranged from burning down various prominent buildings such as the post office and the ROTC building to spiking the water supply with LSD. The craziness spreading through the town laid the perfect scene for the catastrophe that followed fruitless efforts to remove students from their protesting areas with gas three days later.

There's a lot more to the story, but it's one a college student or young adult running a social media account can be forgiven for not knowing. I went to school in the '80s and '90s, and while a great deal of history was pounded into our heads, there appears to have been a great deal of effort to not talk about much after World War 2.

We got the Cliff Notes to the Cliff Notes that America landed on the moon, John F. Kennedy was assassinated, Rosa Parks sat at the front of a bus in Alabama and Martin Luther King gave his "I Have a Dream Speech" and was also assassinated. Throw in the quote from Neil Armstrong and you've literally covered in the previous two sentences as much depth as we got from the 1950s onward.

It was as if schools were forbidden to talk about the Vietnam War or the Civil Rights Movement. Our knowledge of Vietnam came from what little we could glean from "The Wonder Years," Rambo movies and "Forrest Gump." I have a minor in history and got to study how Hitler legally rose to power in Germany and the fall of Czarist Russia, but never a word on the Vietnam Conflict.

The only reason I was exposed to anything involving the Civil Rights Movement was because I took a seminar class on women in history that was fully centered on us gathering interviews from a group of white mothers who were instrumental in making the integration of the Little Rock School District ultimately successful despite low odds and insane threats.

In talking with a handful of high school and college students, it doesn't seem things have changed much. There's better information on the Civil Rights Movement, but when it comes to Vietnam, they're a blank slate. They know it was unpopular and that's it. As for the events at Kent State, not one had heard of it.

In truth, I wouldn't have either had I not walked through the living room one night when a made for TV movie about the events was on. I remember seeing a girl put a flower in a soldier's rifle before gunshots rang out. I was later told what I had seen was about the Kent State Massacre.

It wasn't until decades later that I learned that flower scene didn't happen. As you can probably figure out by the distances listed above, the students never got that close. Instead, the flower scene comes from another tense moment in Washington three years earlier that was captured in a famous photo.

The point is, this is an era in American history where the United States had done a terrible job of educating its people born in the mid-70s and after. It's easy to get outraged at someone trying to make the bosses happy by attempting to be cute with an outdated reference almost no one would have gotten from a 1996 NFL game.

However, mistakes like this are going to happen. Had Kent State not been on the football schedule, whoever put together the tweet might not have even known the university existed.

Did Central Florida need to apologize? Absolutely. It is a rather unfortunate choice that clearly dug into old wounds and came across as tasteless by those who didn't realize it wasn't meant as a reference to that tragic day. And for the record, UCF officials did exactly that.

A statement by the Knights sent to USA Today included the following:

"An unfortunate post was made with the intention to reference the famous Shannon Sharpe sideline clip of him on the phone from a 1996 game against the New England Patriots. As soon as our staff was made aware of the unintended reference to the unfortunate event that took place at Kent State in 1970, the post was removed. It was addressed with our staff immediately, and updated protocols have been put in place to avoid a situation like this in the future."

So was this something to hang onto and destroy someone's career? Probably not under the circumstances. Instead, it's a teachable moment – something in increasingly short supply in this country as time moves forward.

That being said, it would be wise for the social media auteurs in the Razorback Communications office to keep things a bit tame this week while also keeping an eye out for potential bear traps as other schools make their way across the schedule. No need for a cheap laugh to end up on the desk of Hunter Yurachek or the university chancellor. It's just not worth it.