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In what appears to be an unprecedented move, Twitter recently handed over a student’s parody account to administrators at liberal arts college SUNY Geneseo after they complained about some of its tweets.

Twitter later admitted that it made a “mistake” handing over the parody account to administrators and gave it back to the student but then swiftly suspended the account for violating its policy on impersonation.

Isaiah Kelly, the student that operated the parody account, wasn’t warned that his account would be handed over to administrators and only found out when Twitter suddenly informed him the email associated with the account had been changed.

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After the administrators had gained access to the account, they changed the profile image to gray and deleted several of its tweets including one tweet that read “lol forgot to pay the electric bill” – a reference to power outages the university was experiencing at the time.

The administrators also created a “Monitor” list on the parody account which Kelly says they later admitted to creating and adding to the parody account by mistake.

The list is made up of tweets from Kelly and the administrators seem to have created the list to monitor Kelly’s tweets from one of their other accounts.

so i don’t remember creating this myself, in fact i don’t think i’ve ever used the lists feature, but there was a twitter list left over called “Monitor” and included all the tweets and retweets I’ve had over the last few days… I’ll ask tomorrow during the meeting but I… pic.twitter.com/MY10tMeQwS — zåy (@izayakelly) January 31, 2020

quick response from betsy about the monitor list. she says she didn’t intend to attach my personal account to that, which is still creepy but.. it’s a mistake. said she’d get back to me about the screenshots between them and twitter — zåy (@izayakelly) January 31, 2020

Kelly described the creation of the list as “creepy” and was shocked by the sudden handover of the account to administrators.

“No one thinks “lol forgot to pay the power bill” IS ACTUALLY GENESEO,” Kelly tweeted.

Other students also slammed the actions of the SUNY Geneseo administrators and suggested that they should have been focused on the power outages rather than going after a parody account.

Geneseo Admin worried about the power about of a PARODY Twitter account, when there are power outages and no library. Geneseo Admin, youre worried about the wrong power, worry about electricity and the power of having a library — Dongwon Oh (@ohdongwon_) January 29, 2020

Seeing that Geneseo runs their own social media accounts like that of an actual clown college, you would think they would know how to take a joke 💀 — Maddie Robbins 💀 (@mr5mar) January 30, 2020

https://twitter.com/izayakelly/status/1222632391728156674

The university then responded to the incident by insisting that it has a sense of humor: “Contrary to popular belief, we have a sense of humor (remember the time we taped a banana to the wall in the union and posted it on Instagram?).”

including the use of social media, and situations where the joke is on us. We might not always laugh along, but we won’t try to stop it or take it down either. The latest buzz on Twitter is that we hacked a student’s Twitter account (2/9) — SUNY Geneseo (@SUNYGeneseo) January 30, 2020

It then went on to claim that Twitter turned over the parody account to university administrators after determining that the account violated Twitter’s policy on account impersonation.

We changed the profile images to grey and removed the tweets that were being confused with official communications from the College. We’ve spoken to the student who created the impersonation account, and while we believe that their (4/9) — SUNY Geneseo (@SUNYGeneseo) January 30, 2020

The university added that it had removed tweets from the parody account because “they were being confused with official communications” and said that “mimicking official statements could put the health and safety of our community at risk.”

So, tease us, mock us, lampoon us, but don’t impersonate us. Be funny, even be mean if you must, but make sure followers can differentiate between official SUNY Geneseo information and your parody. (9/9) — SUNY Geneseo (@SUNYGeneseo) January 30, 2020

In a follow-up thread, Kelly said that “deleting the tweets in my opinion was definitely a step too far” and added that “Geneseo needs better communication with their students” because the administrators didn’t get in touch with him after taking over the account and deleting some of its tweets.

should be expected from the “marketing department” not sure what the official title is of their area but either way, an official response through a tweet is not the way to go 🤷🏽‍♂️ — zåy (@izayakelly) January 30, 2020

as i mentioned before, even changing the name, bio, tag, etc. but deleting (personally) my most popular tweets from any account that everyone was having fun and laughing at? f*cked. To conclude, @SUNYGeneseo communicate with your students better & more frequently 🤷🏽‍♂️ — zåy (@izayakelly) January 30, 2020

Other students were also critical of the university’s response and the way it cited the taping of a banana to a wall in an attempt to defend itself.

SUNY Geneseo: "Remember when we taped a banana on the wall and posted it on insta? ha ha HA! We're so funny!" pic.twitter.com/R9LVauLEaV — Dongwon Oh (@ohdongwon_) January 30, 2020

Okay G******’s defense for taking down the meme page was “ 😢 The account was impersonating us😰😥😓 but don’t worry we’re funny because we copied that one banana on the wall joke 🤣🤪” — william at a distance (@willsnydes) January 30, 2020

When SUNY Geneseo tapes up a banana to the wall, posts it on Instagram and calls it a “joke”, later citing it as humor in an attempt to defend itself pic.twitter.com/zDuz2aquMF — Dongwon Oh (@ohdongwon_) January 30, 2020

In yet another bizarre turn of events, Twitter admitted that it had made a “mistake” and gave the parody account back to Kelly butthen suspended it for violating Twitter’s policy on impersonation.

Kelly has requested transcripts of the chat between Twitter and university administrators which led to his parody account being handed over to them but hasn’t yet received them.

Twitter said it’s investigating what happened and that the university shouldn’t have been given access to the parody account.