Personal posters: A new take on connecting with people
Photo of Matt Willard, Cameron Block, and Evan O’Conner via Matt Willard
Some new and interesting posters have popped up around the Geneseo campus and no one seems to know quite where they came from. There are two variations of the posters that appeared in early Feb., both containing the following elements: photos of a college-aged male, a short and strange bio, and a phone number and Snapchat username. One variation of the poster is dedicated to a person named “Evan O’Connor,” and the other to a “Cameron Block.”
Being the nosey person I am, I dialed the number on the Block poster to see if I could gather some more information. To my surprise, Block answered the phone on the first ring. Although the conversation was brief, it gave me enough information to fuel the flames of my curiosity, and I immediately dialed the number on the O’Connor poster.
Unlike Block, O’Connor did not answer when I initially called, so I left a message. I was not expecting any form of response from O’Connor as I am a complete stranger calling him on a random Monday, but later that same evening he returned my call. It was during this call that I found out that O’Connor and Block are friends, and that neither of them attend SUNY Geneseo.
I was taken aback by this information, as I was under the assumption that these two people must be students at Geneseo, since their faces are plastered all around campus. Both O’Connor and Block are located about 90 minutes away from our campus in the Niagara Falls area. O’Connor is a first-year engineering major at Niagara County Community College, and his constituent Block is a first-year electronic power technology major attending Bismarck State College online. As you may now suspect, there is a Geneseo connection for these two friends; that connection is Matt Willard, a freshman physics major.
Through further correspondence, I learned the origins of the posters; O’Connor was visiting Willard when the idea was spawned: “It was a random idea I had in passing at around noon on Friday, Feb. 10, and by the end of the night there were multiple posters put up around the campus of Geneseo,” O’Connor said. Willard also commented on this, saying that the posters were printed right here on campus using a printer in Red Jacket Dining Hall and then posted by himself and his girlfriend.
In terms of location, Willard stated that the poster placement was strategic: “[We put them in] places that have more student traffic than staff, so places like the gym and the area in the [Integrated Science Center] near the vending machines or the seats in Bailey,” he said. “We didn’t want staff seeing them because they’d be more likely to be taken down.” It appears that the strategic placements have worked, as there are still posters scattered around campus.
When prompted, Willard told me that the “[posters] were just a joke to embarrass our other friend [Block].” This joke garnered quite the response from Geneseo students, with many taking the tear off contact information. Both Block and O’Connor have received text messages and Snapchats that can only be attributed to these strange postings. O’Connor wanted to make it known that he now has a girlfriend and is in a happy committed relationship, but it is not a result of the posters.
All and all, it doesn’t seem that the posters have had a negative impact on the Geneseo campus. If anything, the posters gave students on campus a reason to laugh during their chaotic schedules, whether when they were waiting for a class to start or just walking down the hall. Although I am not sure that putting posters around campus with your contact information on them is the best way to garner attention, it certainly was an interesting approach taken by the three friends.
