Gage Duffin

The belltower saga — how Gage Duffin made his dream a reality

What began as a joke on Twitter soon became a campaign to let Utah State University student Gage Duffin into the Old Main bell tower, and after one year, seven months and 26 days, Duffin — known as the Bell Tower Boy — finally made it in. 

Duffin’s bell tower campaign began over spring break 2019. He was exploring the different buildings on campus and wondered if there was a way to get into the bell tower. He found a few doors, but they were all locked.  

“I remember walking out, and I sat on the block A and tweeted something along the lines of, ‘Tried to figure out how to get into Old Main’s bell tower. Failed,’” Duffin said. “And then I tweeted about it like once or twice throughout the rest of that semester. And over that summer it just kind of became a thing.”

At first, Duffin was told that he wouldn’t be let into the bell tower due to safety concerns, but this didn’t deter him. He kept tweeting and eventually the university Twitter page started to have some fun with him.

When Matt Gerrish became the assistant director for USU’s social media just over a year ago, he noticed Duffin was one of the students regularly tweeting at the university. 

“He was very consistent with it, and we kept seeing mentions in our inbox over the course of months,” Gerrish said. “And they were really funny, like, even everybody in our office are like, ‘these are great.’ Like, we need to make this happen. Like, how can we actually get this kid in the bell tower because we thought it would make for great social media engagement.” 

Gerrish planned to let Duffin into the bell tower early in the spring, but due to safety concerns and COVID-19, it kept getting pushed back. 

“We told Gage about it long ago, so he’s known he’s going to be getting into the bell tower, he just didn’t know when it was going to happen,” Gerrish said. “He’s been very patient throughout the whole process.”

Though Gage knew he was going to be let in at some point, he was worried when he didn’t hear from Gerrish for a while. 

“At the end of September, they messaged me and they’re like, ‘all right, we got the green light we’re going,’” Duffin said. “And then I didn’t hear from them for a couple of weeks, and I thought they were ghosting me. And I was a little frustrated. I was like, man, I got so far. They told me like they were gonna let me up and now they’re not, like that sucked. And then a week or two ago, he messaged me again.” 

After waiting since spring, Duffin was finally given the go ahead, and on Nov. 6, one year and seven months after his first tweet about the bell tower, he made it in. 

Gerrish came up with the idea to turn the bell tower story into an Instagram TV series where Duffin will take students on virtual tours to places on campus that they may not know about or have access to. 

The first episode will be the bell tower, and there’s a long list of potential locations to take Duffin next, including the Aggie Chocolate Factory, the theater costume shop, the Caine Dairy Farm and maybe even St. Ann’s Retreat — or the nunnery — in Logan Canyon.

Gerrish is aiming to release the first episode this Friday, and the goal is to release new videos monthly until the end of the school year. 

If there’s anything Duffin has learned from the great bell tower saga, it’s to never give up.

“Never give up on your dreams. And if anybody tells you you can’t accomplish something, take it personally and prove them wrong,” Duffin said. “If your dream is getting into a bell tower, it’s accomplishable.”

 

 

Darcy Ritchie is a second-year journalism student at Utah State from Idaho Falls, Idaho. Outside of writing for the Statesman, she loves to DJ for Aggie Radio, eat french bread in the Walmart parking lot, and tweet.

—darcy.ritchie@usu.edu

@darcyrrose 

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gage duffinnovember 2020Old Mainstudent lifeUtah State University

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