Followers of the U.S. Department of Education’s Federal Student Loan Twitter feed received a reminder to fill out an important application with an inappropriate meme from the movie Bridesmaids.
Every year, parents and students seeking federal student loans have to fill out an application called the “Free Application for Federal Student Aid” or FAFSA for short. Whoever operates the Twitter feed for the agency must have gotten bored with their job because instead of sending out the usual, boring reminder to fill out their application, they thought they’d include a cute, pithy meme that reminded them why they need federal student loan aid in the first place. A follower captured a screenshot of the offending Tweet on their phone before the Federal Student Aid office took it down.
Anne Krees, president of Monroe Community College in Rochester, New York, saw the offending Tweet and demanded that the agency take it down immediately. Unfortunately, the agency didn’t heed her warning fast enough because several other followers saw the unfunny reminder and filed their own aghast complaints on their Twitter feeds. Krees called the lame attempt at a joke “tone deaf and just wrong.” The operator of the @FAFSA feed took down the reminder and issued an official apology “for the insensitivity of our previous tweet.”
Normally, we’re for anything that tries to put a funny spin on something serious but this was just misguided and harsh. It’s like a hospital ER doctor roasting a patient for getting hit by a car as he’s being wheeled into surgery. Trying to be some kind of Patch Adams in any kind of job that serves people in need is a stupid idea–and not just because the movie Patch Adams sucked out loud.
