(Photo courtesy of snapchat) “Snapchat’s logo, used to indicate the texting social media app”

Julie Sage
Connector Staff

If you’re on the Snapchat Class of 2026 group story, then you know who Stephen is and how he has become an icon of the freshman class. People post “Stephen sightings” in the story group and say that things are “Stephen moments,” even if other people are posting them. Almost every day, something is posted about Stephen, and some students look forward to seeing one of Stephen’s posts on the story. But how did this happen?

A couple of weeks ago, Stephen Freel, a freshman computer science major, was posting on the Snapchat group story about different things happening in his life. Some students then started commenting that they didn’t like him posting in the group story and finding the stuff he was posting unnecessary. As a result, many other students jumped to Stephen’s defense and thus started his sudden fame within the class.

Some members of the Snapchat group story were asked why they became “Stephen supporters.” The consensus among those who responded was that they supported Stephen because he was just minding his business and enjoying his life. One student, Max Degan, another computer science major, said, “honestly, I just like his posts and I hate when ’weird’ people get [expletive] on for being different, so I show my support.”

Another big reason for many students is he didn’t allow other people to change how he lived his life. He kept posting what he wanted to post on the stories and didn’t care if people cared about it or not. They also liked that while he played with everyone and did things like posing for the “Stephen sightings” and taking a picture with people, he also showed humility. People like his sense of humor and genuinely enjoy the things he posts on the story. Some even check the Snapchat story group just to see if he’s posted something. This trend of posting about Stephen has continued for multiple weeks, with no signs of slowing down.

But the important question is, who is Stephen Freel? Stephen is a computer science major, which he chose because he likes the mechanics of logic in it. He first started by writing down logic circuits of arithmetic-logic units, which are components of a CPU. From there, his passion expanded to more aspects of computers, and he started programming. Outside of school, he likes to compose music. He plays piano and violin, and the music he composes is in the classical and jazz genres. For classical, he’s currently composing a theme and variations type piece on the theme of Niccoló Paganini’s Caprice No. 24 in A Minor. When asking about his opinion on his sudden fame in the Snapchat group story, Stephen said, “it makes me feel good. I know that when high school ended, I lost a few friends, and so when I took over the story group, it felt good to get so much attention.”