Campus Center staff at the University of Massachusetts Boston scoured the Campus Center and nearby bulletin boards after they were told about a series of flyers that were not printed by the university. These flyers were not authorized by the campus, though they were similar to those that were.

One of the students involved, who requested that they remain anonymous, said that the flyers were put up as part of a group project for their Sociology of Media and Mass Communication class. The student said that the project’s aim was to look at culture jamming, which is when people set up fake advertising campaigns to draw attention to issues and to question the status quo.

The student said, “[What] we went out to do is create advertisements that looked like UMass Boston advertisements, but kind of show a more accurate [ad], like how students feel about the services that happen at UMass.” The student noted that “They were seen very negatively by administration, understandably.”

The student said that the group produced 45 flyers using photos from the university’s website, and referred to available formatting documents.

The student said that they also went to Student Activities to see if they could get the flyers approved, saying, “It was super easy for them to get approved by the school,” possibly because the flyers looked legitimate. The flyers received approval stamps on two separate occasions, and were put up on Tuesday, Nov. 29 and the following day, Wednesday, Nov. 30.

The flyers received much support on Facebook, as social media followers identified with the satirical messages of the flyers. The anonymous student noted that “it worked for them, but for the school it didn’t.”

By Friday, Dec. 2, the message had spread around the campus, and members of the administration told Campus Center staff to remove the flyers. The student noted that the flyers were first noted by the school when one of the flyers mocking school advising was seen by advising staff who felt that they were being criticized.

The student claimed that, when their group had made the flyers, they did not have malicious intent. They explained, “They weren’t meant as an attack [but] more as to kind of show how people feel about what’s going on, and [to] bring more of an awareness to these kind of issues.”