Boston University students watched their chance for free grilled cheese sandwiches melt away on Monday night as Emerson College pulled away in the Harold & Kumar’s Munchies Truck Tour contest.
The contest between BU and Emerson College was one of many, set up by Warner Bros. between pairs of social-media savvy colleges in cities nationwide. The contests promoted “A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas,” the latest film in the “Harold & Kumar” franchise, which is set to be released in theaters on Nov. 4.
Students from BU and Emerson College cast their ballots by voting on the official “Harold & Kumar” Facebook page or by posting tweets on Twitter that contained the hashtags #HK3D and either #BUHasTheMunchies or #EmersonHasTheMunchies.
At stake in the contest was a visit from Boston’s own Roxy’s Gourmet Grilled Cheese truck, which as of early Tuesday morning, will be going to Emerson College’s campus on Nov. 4 for three hours to bring students there free grilled cheese sandwiches.
James DiSabatino, of Roxy’s Gourmet Grilled Cheese, said that Warner Bros. asked to him to be a part of the contest.
“We thought it would be fun to do,” he said in an email. “Simple as that.”
Roxy’s Gourmet Grilled Cheese has its own social media presence, which includes its Facebook page and Twitter account, where it posts the truck’s location throughout the day.
“Social media is important because it gives us the opportunity to create a conversation with our customers,” DiSabatino said. “It gives them a chance to see what we are really like.”
By midnight on Monday, Emerson had defeated BU by a 10 percent margin. Out of the 12 nationwide contests, the BU-Emerson contest was the second-closest competition to date, according to the official Harold & Kumar Facebook page.
BU’s size and Emerson’s social media reputation gave believers in each school something to hold onto, as well as something to temper their expectations with, leading up to the deadline.
Emerson students’ social media skills were displayed in a June USA Today article titled “20 Colleges Making Good Use of Social Media.”
“I have no idea who will win. It looks really close,” DiSabatino said in the email earlier on Monday. “As an Emerson alum, I know what those kids are capable of, though. But at the same time, there are WAY more students at BU.”
Current students at their respective schools each said they were confident in their chances.
“We definitely have more students than Emerson has, and I don’t know. I just feel like BU communicates better on Twitter about things than anything else,” said Scott Eisen, a junior in BU’s College of Communication. “I mean, BU has like 50 accounts on Twitter that tweet all this random information.”
Krystal Metcalf, a sophomore at Emerson College, said that she learned about the contest via Twitter.
“I guess I don’t know that much about BU, but as for Emerson everybody is really into social media, and they take it super seriously,” Metcalf said. “I mean we got on the list and you guys didn’t.’
BU students are still able to get rid of the taste of defeat with a sandwich from Roxy’s— they just have to pay full price.
“We are at BU Friday and Sat. nights,” DiSanatino said. “We would love to be at BU more, but there are only so many days in a week, so unfortunately we can’t.”
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