Starting Friday, Northwestern students will no longer have to jump from calendar to calendar in search of upcoming student group happenings. That’s when a weekly e-mail listing all on-campus events for the subsequent two weeks will start arriving in student inboxes.
There are multiple calendar resources on campus, but there has never been a consolidation of all student group events, said Al Cubbage, vice president for university relations.
“The reason we’re doing this is to have a central source for all events on campus,” he said.
The Associated Student Government started lobbying for the system when student groups expressed a desire for more campus awareness of activities, said Associated Student Government President Neal Sales-Griffin. ASG tried to set up a similar system on its Web site in the past, he said.
“What we did before was we had a weekly events calendar posted on our site,” Sales-Griffin said. “But that isn’t as stable as the new one will be.”
Once ASG proposed the idea, the Center for Student Involvement and PlanIt Purple took over to set up the technology for the e-mail system.
The Campus Publicity Committee, which meets every quarter, proposed the plan for environmental and publicity reasons, said CSI Director Helen Wood.
“It’s in response to the issues of the mess that was being created with flyers and how ugly campus looked, and also in response to the concerns about being wasteful,” she said.
Flyering on campus also relies on students looking down while they are walking and stopping to read a sign, whereas an e-mail allows easier access for students, Wood said.
PlanIt Purple became involved in this system to draw more interest to the resources the site provides for students. The list of the events will include links to the corresponding Web sites so students can learn more information.
PlanIt Purple already lists sporting and fine arts events, music and guest speakers, but its listings do not include special events hosted by student groups. The new e-mail system will only publicize student groups’ events, so this is a way of encouraging groups to put themselves on PlanIt Purple, Cubbage said.
Groups will not be able to list their weekly meetings, and administrators must approve their submitted events before posting.
Wood said the system is ready for its first run this Friday, and CSI and PlanIt Purple will use Spring Quarter as a testing period to see how students respond.
“This spring will be getting it going and getting it up and running,” Cubbage said. “We’re pretty sure that the technological things are done to create this newsletter, pull this information out of PlanIt Purple easily and send it easily. We think it will work well.”
