The ntseniors snapchat account, now temporarily down, was launched on March 2 by senior Billy Maloney in the hopes of providing a social media platform on which the senior class can share its experiences.

“Essentially you can take a Snapchat [photo or video] of anything, and send it to ntseniors, and it will automatically become the story on the ntseniors page,” said Maloney.

A Snapchat story is a collection of photos and/or videos that a user decides to share with every Snapchat friend, as opposed to sending the photo or video to certain individuals.

“It wasn’t my idea to come up with something like this. I know that many colleges have it, and I got the idea from a post on Reddit,” said Maloney.

The Reddit poster was Steve Allaben. Maloney reached out to Allaben and told him that he thought that this would be fun to do at New Trier, but that he needed help setting it up.

“Steve was there whenever I had any questions, which was nice because I had a lot along the way. It took me a lot of time to set up the account just because computer programming is not my thing, but it’s definitely worth it now,” Maloney said.

When Maloney first set up the account he made it so that whenever a photo or video is sent to the account, it goes on the story right away, and Maloney can’t take it off once it’s been put on.

This was very concerning to him, so after a day or so he made it so that he had to approve every single Snapchat that is sent to the account. Maloney claimed that he has declined 50 or so Snapchats since the creation of the account.

“I understand that people still want to see stuff such as alcohol and parties because that’s what draws a lot of the intrigue, but I still have to make it somewhat appropriate,” said Maloney.

Bullying through the app, however, remains hard to define for Maloney. As in all cases like this, there is a difference between friends mocking and making fun of each other and serious bullying and put downs, according to Maloney.

“Anyone can take a picture of a black screen and say whatever they want on it, and sometimes that gets really bad. Or someone can take a picture of someone without their knowledge, and say something bad about the person. I don’t want this to go down the drain like Yik Yak did, so I try to not make it mean and offensive.”

Maloney continued, “Whenever I receive anything controversial, I always text my friends and ask them if they think it’s too mean to go on the page. And if they say ‘yes,’ I have agreed every time. It’s a good system because it shows that I’m not the sole person running the page. I may have the final say in what goes on, but there is input from other students as well.”

According to Maloney, the administration does not know about the page yet but he jokingly said, “They will when the article comes out.”

Maloney doesn’t know what the administration will think of the page when they find out. But his prediction is that he will most likely be asked to take it down.

“I mean when you have stuff on there that is not appropriate for adults in our school, it is always going to raise some eyebrows. But we’re high school students, what do you expect us to do?”

Due to the latest Snapchat update the ntseniors account is temporarily unavailable. Maloney is working to relaunch the account soon.