Not exactly. Zachary A Corker ’04’s position as special assistant to the dean for social programming was actually created to help student groups navigate University Hall’s administrative bureaucracy to plan social events of their own.

Corker says the title “fun czar” was neither accurate, nor of his choosing.

“The Harvard Gazette was the first to use it,” Corker says. “They threw it in as a teaser on the first page.”

“It’s a brutal title, but it sticks like glue,” he adds. “It won’t go away.”

Newspapers around the world picked up a Reuters story about Corker, and college publications—at Dartmouth, Brown, Brandeis, and more—published articles about Harvard’s supposed social struggles and the man hired to resolve them.

And not all Corker’s press was favorable, or even neutral. The Boston Herald referred to Corker as a “boozing bozo,” while Bill O’Reilly on FOX News called Corker’s job “The Most Ridiculous Item of the Day” on Jan. 14.

For Harvard, it can be lonely at the top. After all, who wants to make fun of number two?

­—Staff writer Sam Teller can be reached at steller@fas.harvard.edu.