By Travis Baugh 

Staff Writer 

Brookhaven College and  the rest of the Dallas County Community College District are getting in on the photo-sharing action with DCCCDLife.  The idea of a shared Instagram account is to promote the place a group of people live, work or go to school. DCCCDLife is managed by the district marketing department, however, every week the baton is passed to a student at one of the campuses For that week, the student is in charge of the account. 

Madeline Bottoni, Brookhaven web writer and editor of marketing and creative services, along with Joanna Jordan from the district office and Megan Harris from the Eastfield College campus, started the DCCCDLife Instagram. “We thought this would be a great opportunity to get students across all the campuses involved,” Bottoni said.

The DCCCDLife Instagram was launched for the first week of classes this semester, and the list for Instagram users was quickly filled. Instagram was launched in 2010, according to an article by Tom Leonard for the Daily Mail. Due to its popularity, it was purchased for $1 billion by social media giant Facebook in 2012.

The first student to take over the DCCCDLife account was Brookhaven College marketing and creative services staff member Mauricio Luna. “I’m not a selfie kind of guy,” Luna said. “My approach was places I liked to hang out or things I thought were cool. If you get the opportunity to do it, enjoy it, and be yourself.”

Students participating are encouraged to share their everyday lives as members of DCCCD. “We are trying to market it as a way for college students to express themselves,” Bottoni said.

Photography experience is not required, nor is a personal Instagram account. The only requirements are a smartphone and the Instagram app. Each student is given one week out of the 15-week semester. The account will pass between the seven campuses in the DCCCD. “You’ll see the different styles of how people take their pictures,” Luna said.

So far, the account has more than 100 followers. Bottoni posts about it on Facebook and Twitter. Bottoni said the account has been favorably recieved thus far. The marketing department has also discussed the idea of opening it up to include the breaks between semesters as well.

“It’s still new and we are still trying to develop it … and we really wanted to bring all the campuses together,” Bottoni said. Anyone wanting to sign up for next semester can head over to dcccd.info/dcccdlife. Openings for the spring 2015 semester will be available in December.