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BY ERIC MILES GLOVER

In print | February 10, 2005

“It is what it is — you take it or leave it,” Nathan La Porte ’08 said.

La Porte was talking about his LiveJournal — an on-line journal — which has a link on the Swarthmore Admissions Web site to showcase the first-year student experience at the college.

The Admissions Office had long been in search of a way to make its Web site student-oriented and organic. La Porte’s LiveJournal was the perfect solution.

Though the journal is not the first item listed in a Google search of “Nathan La Porte,” all prospective Swarthmore students who visit the Admissions Web site can locate his chronicle.

The Admissions Web site extols La Porte as a “Featured Student” and invites visitors to “read Nathan La Porte’s [LiveJournal] accounts of his freshman year at Swarthmore.”

A native of Washington, D.C., La Porte is an ordinary Swarthmore student made extraordinary by the fact that his LiveJournal provides prospective students a glimpse of the Swarthmore experience. He first created his LiveJournal during his junior year in high school.

La Porte attended a summer program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he wrote lengthy e-mails to friends and family.

He wanted to revive that practice as a first-year student at Swarthmore. However, he wanted to post e-mails in a LiveJournal so that people he had forgotten to e-mail could read them easily on the Internet.

“I started putting [e-mails] on the LiveJournal after I wrote them,” he said. “I first [posted] Sept. 5.”

La Porte now posts e-mails to his LiveJournal every one to two weeks and describes his LiveJournal as unlike the typical LiveJournal.

“I’m not going to [post] deep details about my personal life,” he said.

He is also not going to post negative things about Swarthmore.

“I really don’t have any negative things to say about Swarthmore because I really like it,” he said. He also said his LiveJournal is “pre-censored” because of his intended audience.

LaPorte did, however, include a few grievances about Engineering 005 and a troublesome fire alarm in Mary Lyon.

Facilities Coordinator Paula Dale has been writing a psychology paper about the transition between high school and college. A friend of La Porte’s uncle, she also heard about the LiveJournal. Soon after his post about the fire in ML, Dale sent an e-mail informing La Porte that the troublesome fire alarm in Mary Lyon had been replaced. La Porte was entertained by the idea that its replacement was the result of his LiveJournal.

“Two thousand people have visited [the LiveJournal], as a result [of the Admissions Web site link],” he said. “Anywhere between 30 and 50 people a day.”

One of the 2000 people was a prospective student that La Porte hosted. According to La Porte, the prospective student had read the LiveJournal before his college visit and was ecstatic that his host was its writer.

“That was kind of cute,” La Porte said, smiling. “I was kind of excited by that, actually.”

La Porte receives e-mails and comments from visitors as well.

“I’ve gotten — I don’t know — 20 or 30 comments on the site and … 10 [e-mails] with questions,” he said.

Some visitors have e-mailed La Porte with questions about the admissions process, which he is unable to answer. He directs these visitors to the Admissions Office in reply e-mails and has posted a disclaimer at the top of his LiveJournal: “I have no information about the mechanics of the admissions process, and I will simply advise you to call or e-mail them,” he warns. “They’re very friendly and helpful, so don’t hesitate to do so.”

How the Admissions Office heard about his LiveJournal is an unreal instance of six degrees of separation — of sorts.

“It’s this weird connection of stuff,” La Porte said.

La Porte’s uncle and Stu Hain, Associate Vice President for Facilities Management, are friends. When La Porte’s uncle told Hain that his nephew had a LiveJournal chronicling his experience at Swarthmore, Hain then told his friend Tom Krattenmaker, director of news and information. Krattenmaker then told Jim Bock ’90, dean of admissions and financial aid.

Krattenmaker approached La Porte about the Admissions Web site linking to his LiveJournal Thursday, Dec. 8. La Porte agreed and the Admissions Web site began linking to the journal the next day.

“I’ve had my eye out for many years for a student blog or LiveJournal,” Krattenmaker said.

He and Bock had been in search of an organic way to attract prospective students to Swarthmore.

They explored the possibility of having students and faculty write blogs about their experiences before deciding against the idea.

“Ideally, we wanted to find someone who was doing it already,” Krattenmaker said.

“I was delighted that his blog emerged,” he said. “I think he writes very effectively about the student experience [at Swarthmore].”

This perceived quality of his writing helped Krattenmaker and Bock decide to link his LiveJournal to the Admissions Web site.

“There’s this sort of image and visibility issue … to show the breadth of Swarthmore,” Bock said.

Bock wants to counter negative stereotype of Swarthmore — “that it’s all work and no play,” he said.

He views La Porte’s LiveJournal as a way of displacing that myth, as it is the true Swarthmore story and not the institutional propaganda story.

“I think students believe students,” Bock said.

Having the Swarthmore home page and Admissions Web site convey the true Swarthmore story as opposed to the institutional propaganda story is the model for which Krattenmaker and Bock are striving.

What Krattenmaker and Bock especially like about the upgraded Admissions Web site is its lack of a narrator or omniscient voice — droning about how good Swarthmore is — in favor of the student voice.

This is evident in the revamped Swarthmore Admissions view book and the “Swarthmore Unscripted” DVD.

“Our front page is loaded with substance,” Bock said. “It’s a subtle message that Swarthmore is a place of substance where real things happen.”

Bock said he hopes La Porte’s LiveJournal will attract prospective students to Swarthmore.

“I think it shows another voice,” he said. “His experience is one of 1,400 students.”

Bock also said he hopes more students will write about their experiences at Swarthmore in LiveJournals like La Porte’s. “I think he does a really good job,” he said.

“He doesn’t tell us when he’s going to blog or what he’s going to write about,” Krattenmaker said. “In my perfect world, he would write every week.”

“I would say every day,” Bock said.

Krattenmaker and Bock view La Porte’s LiveJournal as a successful venture in Admissions student outreach but recognize their noncommittal relationship with him.

“We’ve put no restraints on him,” Krattenmaker said. “He’s free to turn off when he wants to.”

“There was very little expectation on our parts,” La Porte said.

The use of a LiveJournal is nothing new to the Swarthmore Web site.

History professor Tim Burke’s blog had been featured on the Web site for quite some time. “He writes about political issues and higher education,” Krattenmaker said.

Burke’s blog offered a faculty perspective of Swarthmore, however, and La Porte’s LiveJournal directly relates to Admissions student outreach.

Bock said looks forward to seeing La Porte’s name appear in “Why Swarthmore?” essays as Swarthmore Unscripted and other students’ names have.

La Porte does not know what the future holds for his LiveJournal with regards to Admissions, but he plans to continue to post e-mails.

“Why not?” he said. “I’ll probably keep doing it because there will not stop being people wanting to hear what I’m up to.”

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