UC President Santa Ono Tweets Out The Worst Picture Ever

Jan 30, 2013; Cincinnati, OH, USA; University of Cincinnati fans compete for a t-shirt during the first half of the game against the Rutgers Scarlet Knights at the Fifth Third Arena. Mandatory Credit: Rob Leifheit-USA TODAY Sports

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Last night UC President Santa Ono was in New York City doing whatever the face of a major university does when he travels. While there he was visited by Emory University and former Cincinnati president Nancy Zimpher. Ono immediately took this photo of the two together.

If you notice, that image above is my own snapshot of Ono’s picture. A picture inside a picture if you will (I know, some real Inception type stuff going on here). Ono deleted the original version almost immediately after he released it. The reason is because as soon as the UC president sent out that tweet, it was met with all kinds of let’s call them “negative” replies from Bearcats fans.

I mean, I don’t blame them. I myself was in full facepalm mode when Ono sent that out. I realize that Zimpher’s efforts at UC went a long way to raising the academic profile of the university but she’s also the same person that canned beloved head coach Bob Huggins just as basketball was gearing up to join the difficult Big East Conference. That decision plummeted the program into a hole that it only recently completed digging itself out of. Now, Santa Ono is an intelligent man. He really is. Someone doesn’t get to his position without thinking several moves ahead of his peers. But how does Ono not have the presence of mind to understand that sharing that with his his 30,000+ followers, many of whom I’m sure are associated with UC, wouldn’t be met with backlash.

At the end of the day this snafu doesn’t mean much of anything but it was certainly an entertaining 15 minutes or so between when Ono released the photo and subsequently deleted it. I’m sure the current UC president will never again share a snapshot of him with Nancy Zimpher. That’s something he’s probably learned from all of this. As for for the rest of us, we can take this is a lesson not to tweet out something stupid that we’ll regret later. Even while bored at three in the morning and especially while bored at three in the morning in an alcohol induced state of mind. That’s just bad news all the way around.