UConn Spider-Man wants to remain anonymous, for now

By Emi­ly Sharkis
The Dai­ly Cam­pus
March 7, 2024

I’m sit­ting in McHugh 101 watch­ing some movie that’s required for my Univ 3820 class. It’s incred­i­bly dark, the only light com­ing from the screen. Sud­den­ly, a door creaks open, light pour­ing in as a red and blue sil­hou­ette ducks into the room, quick­ly looks around, and ducks out. I laugh and shoot my friends a look as if to say “Was that him?” They all smile, con­firm­ing my sus­pi­cions. UConn Spi­der-Man is in the building. 

It has been almost two years since UConn Spidey first appeared in Storrs, yet I have only seen him in per­son a hand­ful of times. The seem­ing­ly con­fi­dent man was often sur­round­ed by groups of starstruck fans, yet his moti­va­tions and day-to-day life had always been some­what of a mys­tery to me. 

For two years I had thought about what I would say to Spidey if giv­en the chance. I was about to hop on a Zoom call with him. 

Using Insta­gram DM’s, Spidey and I had set up a time to chat. How­ev­er, as I sat in the emp­ty Zoom room I won­dered if I had got­ten the time wrong. 

“Holy shit, I am so sor­ry I for­got,” Spidey texted me three min­utes after our set time, “I’ve been cram­ming for exams.” 

I laughed at the relat­able mes­sage and sud­den­ly, Spidey felt like less of a celebri­ty and more like a peer. 

“No wor­ries, I total­ly get it,” I respond­ed, try­ing my best to seem “chill” in front of what some have called a “cam­pus legend.” 

“Let me just make sure my room­mate doesn’t walk in…he doesn’t know,” replied Spidey. 

The sec­ond Spidey joined the call, I dis­re­gard­ed all of my pre­pared ques­tions, excit­ed­ly ask­ing “Your room­mate does­n’t know? How does that work?” 

“Yeah. I mean, it’s hard keep­ing a secret like that. I had a dif­fer­ent room­mate when I first start­ed this, so he does know but he has­n’t told any­one… my new room­mate does­n’t know,” Spidey explained, “He’s not real­ly much of a social per­son, so I kind of doubt he’s heard of me.” 

Spidey went on to explain the hid­den “go bag” he keeps in his closet. 

“If I ever need to put on the suit or some­one needs some­thing, I quick­ly go back to my room and grab my oth­er back­pack. It’s got every­thing I could need. My suit, the mask, the face shell. It’s got wipes in case it’s dirty. It’s got like a stick of gum for breath, just like any­thing I could need in that moment, it’s there.” 

“But why Spi­der-Man as opposed to oth­er super­heroes?” I asked. 

“It was the eas­i­est. It does­n’t have a face. You know, you could get a suit any­where. But I also grew up with Spi­der-Man too, so he very eas­i­ly became the first choice. And I mean every­body likes Spider-Man.” 

UConn, in par­tic­u­lar, seems to love Spi­der-Man. This pop­u­lar­i­ty is best exem­pli­fied by a time he attempt­ed to walk past Gam­pel Pavilion. 

As is nor­mal for bas­ket­ball sea­son, the street sur­round­ing Gam­pel Pavil­ion was lined with stu­dents hop­ing for bas­ket­ball tickets. 

“The lines were long and I mean like around the cor­ner, in every exit kind of long and every­one was cheer­ing for the bas­ket­ball team,” recalls Spidey. 

How­ev­er, as he turned the cor­ner the crowd of stu­dents began cheer­ing Spidey’s name instead. 

“The cra­zi­est part was that peo­ple actu­al­ly got out of line to come take a pic­ture with me and then went to the back of the line because they val­ued that pic­ture more than the bas­ket­ball game. It was­n’t even like two or three. I had like a line of like 40 peo­ple, like imme­di­ate­ly. Thank God I had a mask because I was cry­ing, tak­ing all these pictures.” 

While his main goal is to make peo­ple smile, Spidey has also been involved in more seri­ous efforts, such as stand­ing up against the homo­pho­bic street preach­ers that fre­quent UConn’s campus. 

Accord­ing to an arti­cle from WHUS Radio, the pres­ence of street preach­ers at UConn goes back at least a decade. When they showed up on Sept. 28, 2022, Spidey knew what he had to do. 

First, he told his boss he need­ed an hour off to com­plete a job interview. 

“Fuck­ing lie straight up,” Spidey revealed, “I had to get out there. That was one of the times I felt the most loved by the cam­pus. I felt like an avenger walk­ing in.” 

While Spidey is cer­tain­ly a sym­bol of hope and joy, he also wields a lot of pow­er, a fact he learned while attend­ing his sec­ond protest. 

While stand­ing in the hot sun, Spidey noticed the crowd start­ing to get violent. 

“I very quick­ly real­ized my role in the sit­u­a­tion. I was like, although I may dis­agree with the preach­ers here, like fun­da­men­tal­ly, there’s no rea­son to fight them. We don’t want to get the police involved here,” said Spidey. 

“It’s fun­ny,” I added, “Because I imag­ine peo­ple would be like ‘Spi­der Man save us!’ And then they’re like…wait.” 

“You’re not wrong. Peo­ple did that,” Spidey began, “But I real­ized that when I was shout­ing at them, the crowd got real­ly excit­ed and they began, you know, almost try­ing to fight these guys.” 

Not want­i­ng to be the rea­son for vio­lence, Spidey decid­ed to step away from the ener­gized crowd and stand in silence. 

“The crowd sort of just fol­lowed what I did…it was real­ly strange,” said Spidey, “but it was worth it because even­tu­al­ly the preach­ers walked away.” 

One of Spider-Man’s biggest appeals is that while he web-slings through­out New York City, under­neath the mask, he has a some­what reg­u­lar life. While UConn Spidey is no dif­fer­ent, stay­ing anony­mous is some­thing he is sure about, at least for right now. 

“Maybe when I grad­u­ate I will [reveal my iden­ti­ty],” said Spidey, “At the same time, I don’t real­ly want to be known for it. I like the idea that it could be any­body, that it is just an anony­mous guy try­ing to be nice and help out people…I’d hope to have it revealed in a dra­mat­ic way though.” 

“Well, no mat­ter how you do it, I’m sure peo­ple would be real­ly excit­ed,” I told him. 

“I hope peo­ple don’t see me and they’re like damn, he’s ugly…that’s part of why I’ve just been so secre­tive. I’m not ready to be judged by the inter­net. I’m shy as shit in real life as it is,” Spidey said. 

Spidey con­sid­ers him­self to be a reg­u­lar stu­dent, bal­anc­ing work, stud­ies, and being a super­hero. He’s even changed his major mul­ti­ple times. The hard­est part, he says, is liv­ing a dou­ble life. 

“[When] my friends are like, ‘how was your week­end,’ I’d have to be like, ‘Oh, it was bor­ing,’ but real­ly I was like a frat rager…at some points, I got con­fused as to who I was and I got frus­trat­ed because I could­n’t share the expe­ri­ences that I want­ed to at the expense of the secret iden­ti­ty,” said Spidey. 

While Spidey has suc­cess­ful­ly remained anony­mous for close to two years, there have cer­tain­ly been close calls. 

“I was study­ing with this group of peo­ple and I had to leave in a few hours because some­one else want­ed to do an inter­view for a pod­cast thing. [When] I was head­ing over to the pod­cast room, this woman start­ed call­ing my name. I turn around and it’s the woman I was just study­ing with. And I was like, oh fuck, this is it’s game over. This is where I get revealed…all she want­ed was just a pic­ture and then she walked away…I thought that might have been game over, but no, it was okay,” recalls Spidey. 

Look­ing toward grad­u­a­tion, I asked Spidey about the lega­cy he wants to leave behind. 

“I hope that the peo­ple I had expe­ri­ences with keep them in their heart and move for­ward in the same way I do and for those who see me, just think back and laugh and take a minute away from the harsh real­i­ty of school and edu­ca­tion, and stress and exams and just remem­ber that there’s a dude in a Spi­der­man suit just chill­ing,” said Spidey. 

Do you think you’ll try to recruit some­one to take over [after you leave]? I asked. 

“I don’t know. It’s hard because at its best, this is a great way to social­ize and at its worst, it’s cheesy. You need some­one who is will­ing to do it and not take the fame for it…I haven’t real­ly found that per­son yet,” he explained. 

While Spidey is a hum­ble indi­vid­ual, there is no doubt that he has reached a cer­tain lev­el of fame on UConn’s cam­pus. He’s even dealt with imitators. 

“One per­son told me that some guy tried to claim that they were me and pick up [a girl]…and I just I was like…what woman is going to be like, Oh, that’s so hot. You’re Spider-Man,”Spidey joked. 

“You’d be shocked,” I said.