An update to Stanford’s Admission Officer Directory last week removed Assistant Director of Admissions Karen Alonzo ’11 from its contact list, two days after campus publication The Fountain Hopper exposed details of her personal, formerly public Instagram account and its connection to the official Stanford Admission account.
Alonzo’s posts on her personal account, “kaylonz,” contained photos of alcoholic drinks and captions that often included profanity. Examples of controversial captions cited by The FoHo in its latest email newsletter include, “I like my [ice cream] cones black… like my men,” “Unfriendly minority hotties” and “B*tches love foliage.” Alonzo’s account was public before a student posted screenshots of her posts on the Facebook group “Stanford Memes for Edgy Trees,” after which she made her account private and changed her username to “kgotklout.”
According to Alonzo’s LinkedIn profile, she managed the official social media accounts for Stanford Admissions, including the “engagestanford” Instagram profile. She used Stanford Admissions’ official account to like posts on her personal Instagram, including the posts that The FoHo criticized as inappropriate.
The FoHo condemned Alonzo’s overall Instagram activity as “astonishingly unprofessional.”
“Posting this stuff on your own public Instagram is bad enough,” the publication stated. “But liking your own posts with an official Stanford University account? Come on.”
In addition to her role as Assistant Director, Alonzo was the admission officer for Pennsylvania and parts of Florida.
The Daily reached out to Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Richard Shaw for comment and received a response from Lisa Lapin, associate vice president for University Communications.
“We are vigilant about the integrity of our admissions process,” Lapin said. “We are conducting a thorough investigation into this matter and also have taken interim measures while the investigation is underway.”
The Daily also reached out to Alonzo for comment but received no response.
Contact Alex Tsai at aotsai ‘at’ stanford.edu.