Fall term is in full swing, and the 105 student organizations on campus have already begun to paper the walls with posters advertising meetings and events, or distributing information about a specific organization. There are events happening constantly. The Campus Life Office has implemented new changes to make running a student organization and finding out about student organization events easier for all on campus.
They started with updating Engage. All student organizations had to re-register on Engage at the beginning of year, so Campus Life could have an accurate list of what organizations are active on campus.
According to Coordinator of Student Engagement Aryn Smith, Campus Labs – the company that runs Engage – updated the platform to make it easier for students to navigate. Smith also streamlined the event submission process for student organizations, increasing clarity in the steps to plan an event.
Advertising for an event has changed this year too. The updated campus posting policy states:
“Posting is permitted on bulletin boards that are not designated for use by academic or administrative departments or individual student organizations, on wall space that is clearly available as a posting area, and on building exteriors. […] Posting is also not permitted on doors or windows.”
This new policy makes the most popular posting area on campus – the gallery/breezeway – unavailable for advertising.
“Last year what we heard was that it would clog up and everyone would just get used to posters being up there so no one would really read them,” Smith said.
Due to this new policy, student organizations were required to update their bulletin boards by Sept. 30. Smith hopes that by encouraging organizations to revamp their bulletin boards Seymour Union will become a more usable space and it will be clearer to students where to look for advertising from a particular organization: on their bulletin board.
Campus life also aims to bring campus event advertising more into the digital age. Events have been advertised on the Engage homepage for as long as campus has been using the platform, but now students can download the Engage app – CORQ – and scroll through all the events on campus.
“We’re already scrolling anyway,” Smith said, “just do another little scroll to see what’s going on.”
