School wrongly touts man as international student. ‘Bro we both were born in Michigan’

A Michigan university has apologized after touting one of its former students as an international student on its website.

But Muhammad Khan — whose Oct. 4 tweet about Grand Valley State University’s mix-up generated more than 7,000 retweets and 116,000 likes as of Oct. 7 — is not from outside the United States.

“Bro we both were born in Michigan,” Khan said in his tweet. The screenshot Khan shared on Twitter shows an image of himself and another student on campus under a banner that reads “International Students.”

Khan told WZZM he graduated from the university in western Michigan last year. He tweeted the picture to raise attention and help bring change, he said.

“My intention was never to criticize the school, but instead to just turn something bad into like a funny-ish moment, while also still possibly still bringing about change from it,” he said.

While Khan did not direct his tweet at the university, it certainly caught the school’s attention. The next day, Grand Valley State commented on the post.

“Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We’ve contacted the department and it seems this photo was used in error,” Grand Valley State said. “It has now been removed from the website. We apologize for this misrepresentation.”

As of Thursday afternoon, the photo appeared to be taken down from the website.

Others joked on Twitter about the misrepresentation, while making note of similar instances.