Tactical Media Website

This piece was made in collaboration with two additional MSU students as a tactical media website to critique MSU’s current “Spartans Will” campaign that is used to showcase the university’s achievements and research. Spartans Won’t points out issues that the university is lacking in its policy and performance which affects all engaged Spartans: students, faculty, administration, and community. Spartanswont.com was a live website for approximately one month. The video above will take you through the website. Social media accounts were also made and can still be seen:
       Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/spartanswont
       Twitter - https://twitter.com/spartanswont

As a three-person team of Michigan State University students we have noticed that the university has a lot of power and influence that they choose to not use for the well being of their students for multiple reasons such as political correctness, fear of media backlash and their reputation as a BIG10 school being attacked. With the national attention of a Trump presidency, we created a tactical media website, along with social media (facebook and twitter), as a way to address these issues using the hashtag #spartanswont. This hashtag is greatly influenced by the current marketing campaign Spartans Will, which is used to showcase the university’s achievements and research.

We chose to focus on six topics to kick-start this campaign, however, there are a plethora of topics ready at the campaigns disposal. Topics of women's resources being stripped from university funding, the amount of food wasted by dining halls, the lack of solidarity for minorities that have felt threatened on campus, the alcohol culture perpetuated by the students, the rate in which police investigate sexual assault cases, and the staggering tuition rate rise were all presented on the site and social media.

By copying the html/css code for the Spartans Will website (spartanswill.msu.edu) we were able to mimic their website while changing the content for our causes. Because the Spartans Will campaign is nationally known with such potent branding, Spartans Won’t can seize on maximum attention. Although we utilize a satirical approach when discussing our topics, there is no question that they are serious issues. We linked each graphic to accredited news sites that have reported on these issues in order to emphasize the issues at hand.

Because of the way the world works when news becomes old it becomes forgotten, this site is a way to dig back up those topics and make them relevant to the masses again. By using social media, we hope these outlets would be best for distributing these topics and gaining popularity; with enough popularity and discussion surrounding the topics at hand, the administration of Michigan State University will be forced to take action.