Choosing the “perfect” university for yourself is not an easy choice. You need to consider if the university that offers the major you want, if is in the top world ranking, if students absolutely love it and if parents don’t hate it that much: a university with a common identity that you can become a part of. This common identity is constructed gradually throughout multiple generations and is established by students and alumni that leave a legacy behind. Whether it’s the Ivy League and its connotations of academic excellence, or the glorious legacy of Oxbridge, this common identity has established a brand surrounded with an aura of greatness. Thanks to a student, or arguably, some students of one of those distinguished universities, this prestige has been taken took to the world of social media. The university’s legacy would not be affected much by social media if it had been established for many decades. However, when it comes to emerging institutions such as NYUAD, social media does have a strong role in shaping our university legacy.

So what does this entail for a growing university like ours? NYUAD is a name that has been associated with so many perceptions, and its wide range of controversy, throughout its seven years of existence. Social media has had its fair share of portraying different perspectives of NYUAD. In addition to the university’s official Facebook page, we have the unofficial accounts and pages that form an important, if not the most important, part of NYUAD’s perception on social media. This is where it gets interesting.

The infamous NYUAD Confessions page is quite an interesting read. The Facebook page publishes anonymous posts from NYUAD students about a variety of issues. It has become a page that many people on campus regularly read, joke about and know very well. Posts range from light-hearted jokes and comments to very serious, and sometimes, urgent issues. Sometimes, it includes personal thoughts and experiences, and in other times, posts related to NYUAD as an institution and a community.

This is where it gets complicated; where do you draw the line between what is personal and what is public? What is directly associated with the common NYUAD identity and what is solely yours? Then again, how do you distinguish between private and public on social media in general? All of these questions are hard to answer and can turn to really long discussions, which for that matter, we also have a Facebook page for.

Instagram also has its share of portraying NYUAD. There’s an official #mynyuad hashtag that NYUAD community members use to post about their daily lives as part of that community. The antagonistic version of it, having the same name was created to show a negative perspective of this campus. The latter account raised a lot of controversy, with some people arguing that it’s a manifestation of freedom of speech, and others that it’s unfairly shaping the public’s perspective based on a personal view. As a response to that, the #mynyuad Facebook challenge was created as an alternative, where people posted pictures that represented what NYUAD means to them.

In an ideal world prospective students would make their decision about whether or not to attend NYUAD based on thorough research about the institution, access to data and honest conversations with NYUAD students and alumni. Social media images of NYUAD shouldn’t factor into that decision, but they do. The above-mentioned accounts and pages, as well as the personal accounts of students, lead to certain ideas, associations, and expectations about the student experience at NYUAD.

We share a role in creating a legacy. Social media erases that barrier between personal and collective, and that can sometimes distort the truth. It has also made us addicted to the concise and surface representation of things. A picture might not be, after all, worth a thousand words. It might not be worth the first real conversation you had on Saadiyat. Or the class project that introduced you to a lifetime friend. It might not contain the struggles of a new campus and the awe of seeing it slowly grow. It cannot express the homesickness that attacks from nowhere, nor the excitement of coming back for a fresh semester. It cannot tell you how excited you’ll be when you spot the first cloud after the long, long summer. It does not capture accomplishment, failure, heartbreak, discovery, loneliness, change, loss, or knowledge. It cannot embody our NYUAD.