For the first time, the annual USC effort to lobby the legislature wasn't actually held in the Statehouse. It wasn't even held in a building at all — instead, thousands of tweets, Facebook posts and Instagram pictures were shared with #UofSCImpact.
"Last year, I was following groups around, just seeing their story," said Ore Oluwole, My Carolina director of alumni relations. "But this year, I’m not following any group around; I’m following everyone on Twitter."
The university called for students, alumni and South Carolinians to share stories about the impact of USC. While Carolina Day in 2017 focused on advocating a bond bill for a new medical school campus and saw around 100 advocates at booths in the Statehouse, the message this year was much broader.
“It’s time for higher education reform in South Carolina," My Carolina executive director Jack Claypoole said.
Oluwole, a 2016 public relations graduate of USC, runs the My Carolina Alumni Association social media accounts. Around 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, the hashtag #UofSCImpact was trending No. 1 in the region on Twitter.
"My mentions were blowing up," he said.
Alumni like 2015 graduate Ashley Pullen embraced the new social media effort.
"I was able to stay at work and still participate and also come down [to the Alumni Center] and participate as opposed to just having to just go to the Statehouse to participate," Pullen said.
Pullen's Twitter feed mentions Carolina Day or #UofSCImpact over 20 times, with tweets ranging from personal anecdotes about her experience at USC to memes celebrating the university's economic contributions. A North Carolina transplant, she now works as director of marketing and development for the South Carolina Bar Foundation.
"Being here and loving everything about the state of South Carolina, I chose to stay ... giving back my talents and my money to the state of South Carolina," she said. "And so I think it is really important that the state provides more money and funding for the university."
The growing percentage of out-of-state students has been a concern for some in the legislature, who take issue with a freshman class now more than half from beyond the Palmetto State and large scholarships from USC to draw top national talent. The Advocacy Briefing Book created by the university for this year's Carolina Day has four full pages on out-of-state students, with graphs of growing non-resident tuition revenue and declining state appropriations.
According to Claypoole, the out-of-state students are necessary to subsidize low in-state tuition.
“Without [legislators'] help, we can’t keep tuition low," Claypoole said. "They have offloaded the weight of tuition onto the tuition payer.”
The legislature hasn't passed a higher education bond bill since before most current USC students were born. But according to Student Body President Ross Lordo, that will be changing soon.
“This year establishes I think a new era in our state advocacy," he said.
With the bond bill more of a "when than an if" and the proposal to add a student vote at the university board of trustees past the reading stage in the legislature, he said, student involvement is on an up-swing. With almost 35,000 students, USC is just about the size of the average house district in South Carolina.
“This year, for really the first time, we have had a pretty robust dialogue with members of the legislature both in the house and senate on a variety of different issues,” Student Government secretary of governmental affairs Nick Santamaria said.
For example, Santamaria worked with USC-Lancaster alumnus Rep. Brandon Newton to get the trustee bill onto the house floor.
Administrators want to encourage that kind of involvement and direct advocacy to legislators. Strong social media campaigns like Carolina Day's #UofSCImpact can be more effective than in-person efforts, according to university social media strategist CJ Lake. #UofSCImpact has received almost 7 million impressions on Twitter alone, according to a Tweet Binder analysis of the hashtag.
“More importantly, we’re hoping legislators will hop into the hashtag later and just kind of see the story,” she said.
University President Harris Pastides was introduced in both the House and Senate chambers during Wednesday morning and spoke individually with several legislators, but said he was more pleased with the response online.
Social media is “not simply fashionable," he said. "I think it’s actually more effective that way.”