Snapchat geofilters are activated when you’re in a specified range. At a notable destination? Turn on location services and find a cute overlay! The sad thing is though, our campus didn’t have any.

Don't worry, I fixed that.

I learned about creating your own Snapchat filters when my high school friends would send me snaps with an IMSA filter. I didn’t have the opportunity to try making one until someone asked me how to for one of their events almost at the same time as one of my other friends had made a filter for his frat house.

Feeling ambitious, I decided to make one, but of what? Starting with all of campus would be a little much - my friend Vandana sent me snaps from her library with a filter.

I figured if any place would appreciate a library filter, it would be Case.

A running joke on campus is that the Kelvin Smith Library is a place to pretend to study and humblebrag about how late you’re staying. I gave myself a 5 minute time limit since I didn’t want to get caught up in something that would get rejected.

A few days later, though, I got an email saying my filter was approved! Erin and I raced over to see if it had happened. It was pretty goofy to see us running around the library trying to get it to work. Throughout the week, I got tons of ironic snaps, and I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

Since then, the filter has been featured in multiple The Odyssey articles, and my tour guide friends have incorporated it into their tours! It’s been exciting to see the filter become a part of campus life. However, CWRU still is lacking in filters. We have a one for the nursing school that spans an overly-large part of campus, and one for the general campus displaying our wind turbine and university center in school colors. I can’t say I see those used frequently.

So I made a new filter for the spring semester.

I had previously created this filter for a campus organization, but it was never used. I kept the springy gradient and threw in some Cleveland pride, submitted it, and hoped it was selected. Well, I wouldn’t be writing about it if it was never published.

So far, I’ve been able to contribute a filter once every year and I’m hoping to keep doing so!