Beloit College video with squirrels gets close to 6,000 YouTube views

There’s something special going on between higher ed and squirrels.

If you went to the High Ed Web conference in Cincinnati last October (or just watch the backchannel over Twitter), you might have heard about THE Penn State Squirrel (front and center in this photo taken by Anne Petersen) – quite the party animal.

Maybe it’s because they are totally nuts about nuts.
Maybe it’s because they live peacefully on our campuses.
Maybe it’s because of something else.
But, everybody loves squirrels in higher ed.

So when Jason Hughes, Director of Communications and Marketing at Beloit College, emailed me earlier this week about a video featuring squirrels, he got my attention:

“A student here at the college recently ignored my request to do a serious Beloit College video that captured “the beauty of our campus, the essence our people, the quality of our programs…” Instead, he went out and videotaped our squirrels, imagining what they must get from their time on our oak-crowded campus.”

The resulting video is indeed funny and has been quite successful with more than 5,900 views at the time of this writing. It got featured on the Huffington Post, the Washington Post and The Chronicle – proving that there’s definitely something special going on between higher ed and squirrels (even if I’m not sure of what it is ;-)

Have you done or seen a funny video about your institution? Share the link in the comments. I’d love to put a playlist together to share with the group.