Some Protest for Tuition. Incoming Baylor Students Dunk for It.

The stakes for a TikTok trend had never been this high.

I deleted TikTok one year ago, but I came back for the new hashtag #BaylorDunkForTuition, because the premise of hundreds of high school seniors dunking and making trick shots for free tuition seemed too absurd to be real. But it’s true: around 300 people on TikTok and Instagram are competing in a dunk and trick shot video contest for one semester of free tuition at Baylor University this year , worth an estimated $25,000. The seniors in these videos usually wear Baylor merch, and after introducing themselves, they score a dunk or cue up a trick shot montage. The professional ones have inspirational music playing in the background and film-grade camera angles. The endearing ones include stories about the students’ hometowns or upbringing.

Baylor University is a private institution in Waco, Texas, and its men’s basketball team remains undefeated for 2021 in the NCAA, earning 2nd place in the AP Top 25 this week. The #BaylorDunkForTuition contest for incoming and prospective freshmen began on Jan. 26 and closed Feb. 1. Members of Baylor’s men’s basketball team and coach Scott H. Drew judge the entries. They have not yet announced a winner.

The posts have created a sort of viral meme on TikTok. Though many submissions come from basketball players, volleyball players, and artists, other students have also populated the hashtag. In one video, a guy ends up throwing a basketball in a court with no hoop or net. In another, a girl made a short sketch animation of herself dunking.

But most infamous of all is “ballet girl,” an incoming freshman dancer who posted herself shooting a basketball on pointe shoes in a video that now has 5.8 million views. At the end of the clip, she turns to the camera with her hand up in a bear claw and says, “Sic ’Em Bears,” referencing Baylor’s mascot. The video doesn’t look particularly cringey to me — in fact, when I first perused the hashtag, I didn’t even realize that this was the notorious video people were referring to. If anything, I might have been even more awkward than ballet girl if I had done the challenge.

What I found cringey wasn’t the video but the response it received. The comments are pretty ruthless; with over 300,000 likes, the top comment reads, “I hope they make you pay more now.” Virtually every other post in the tag has at least one comment comparing the submission to “ballet girl” — “as long as it ain’t the ballet girl,” one wrote. A video parodying “ballet girl” has received more than 880,000 views on TikTok and became the third video in the hashtag.

While the judges deal with weather-related delays, per the Baylor Admissions Twitter, the comment section has assumed the role of a de-facto judges panel; “i feel like an official judge for this competition i’ve seen like every one,” one spectator wrote.

The university hasn’t posted much indication about the criteria for judging submissions, and it’s entirely possible they will disregard comments and number of views when they select a winner. But many of these submissions are highly creative or personal and have little to do with basketball itself; these competitors seem to think that personality and presentation play a role in the judging of the contest as well. Comments like “boosting this because it’s better than that dancer” also suggest that commenters assume that this is, to some extent, a popularity contest.

I’ve always found that TikTok users are incredibly self-aware of the role they play in the market for virality — they’ll interact with or “boost” certain trends or posts to increase the chance of them showing up on someone else’s “For You” page. If the judges of #BaylorDunkForTuition are also considering personality or popularity, the contest would put a twenty-grand price tag on the power of TikTok users and the algorithm to influence virality. Any contest based on a temperamental app like TikTok is likely unfair. If the contest measures skill, it automatically precludes non-athletes and non-basketball players from a tuition-free semester. If the contest measures popularity, it precludes people who have fallen out of the good graces of netizens and the elusive algorithm — for any reason.

Should a 60 second video — especially one that privileges athletes and outgoing personalities — determine who deserves one fewer semester of student loan debt?

Merit scholarships have their place in higher education, and I would be remiss not to mention that Baylor has its fair share of academic, athletic, and need-based scholarships. They reward academic and personal achievement and create avenues that may not have existed otherwise for students.

Nonetheless, Baylor students are paying around $6,500 more in tuition per year than the national average. Given that the 2020 national average student loan debt is around $30,000, however, “slightly above average” doesn’t feel too promising, given that President Joe Biden is currently only considering student loan debt forgiveness up to $10,000. In the context of America’s student debt problem, high school seniors scoring trick shots and trying to be likeable for under 60 seconds for tuition feels like something out of The Onion.

— Magazine writer Meimei Xu can be reached at meimei.xu@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @meimeixu7.