If you’re on twitter, you may be following the factious President Huddleston, @PrezHuddleston. Her Campus UNH got to ask him a few questions, without revealing his identity..
Are you currently a student at UNH?
Let’s see what I’m allowed to say. I’m a senior at UNH. I’m a guy, which is probably pretty clear from the accounts. Active in a couple campus organizations. Other than that, I’m anonymous for now. At some point, I won’t be.
Where did you first get the idea to make a factious prez account?
I started the account on March 8, 2011 at two in the morning. I’d thought about doing it for a while. Twitter has lots of fake accounts, which they allow as long as you make it clear you’re a parody. I just wanted to have some fun, I guess. I’d followed the real president for a while, and he was the most obvious public figure to parody. The account has actually taught me quite a bit as well.
Have you received a lot of press from your twitter account?
A month and a half after I created the account, a story about fake twitter accounts for college presidents appeared in Inside Higher Education and USA Today, the nation’s second largest newspaper. It talked about other accounts (there are five active ones now), but @PrezHuddleston was front and center in the story. That was when I knew I’d made it. More than the press though, feedback from UNH students (and even staff members) is what keeps the account going.
Tell us about your interactions with the real President Huddleston.
The real Mark Huddleston is also on Twitter (@MarkHuddleston) and followed my account within hours of its first tweet. From time to time, he’ll mention me or I’ll mention him, and we’ll have a back-and-forth exchange. He plays along with a similar sense of humor, which is great. I enjoy having a battle of wits with the president. I’d like to think that he recognizes the humor in the account, even if he rolls his eyes now and then.
If you could give the real President Huddleston advice about UNH what would it be?
Don’t ever use the the recent 50 percent cut in appropriations by the state to UNH as an excuse. For anything. Oh, and tweet more.