This school year, students and administrators are using a new platform called ’Cats on Campus, which acts as a digital hub for Student Organizations and Activities.

’Cats on Campus went live in August, replacing Wildcat Connection. Student organizations helped the platform launch by registering their organizations in late spring for the 2025-26 academic year. 

The system has places for students to search for different student groups, request to join groups and connect with other students and faculty through the directory feature.

According to Joe Lattal, the associate director of Student Organizations and Activities, the previous platform, Wildcat Connection, didn’t allow Northwestern to have its own app.

“We had been with (Wildcat Connection) for over 10 years, and we hadn’t seen any progress on the arrival of any mobile product, so that was a primary motivation for the switch to the new provider,” Lattal said. 

All NU students that attended the Fall Quarter 2025 Student Organization Fair in September were prompted to download the app before entering. The student organizations at the fair displayed a QR code that students could scan, taking them directly to the organization’s page on ’Cats on Campus.

Weinberg senior Ferdy Salmons was at the Org Fair as the president of NU World Cup.

He said the process of scanning the QR code was convenient because he could bypass the extra step of having to collect interested students’ names before reaching out to them later. 

“It was all slightly chaotic, so it’s nice to start everyone in the same spot,” he said.

Since the app has a feature that allows students to request to join without having to directly communicate with the club, Salmons said he is still receiving requests weeks after the Org Fair. 

Students can also look at ’Cats on Campus to see organizations’ events via the calendar feature. 

Lattal said the volume of events posted on the event calendar feature of the app has grown tremendously in comparison to the Wildcat Connections event calendar. 

Since the launch of the platform, groups have posted over 500 events to the calendar, compared to only about 100 posted on Wildcat Connection in the entirety of last year. 

“There’s really no comparison with the increase in volume on that platform,” Lattal said. 

The platform was used by the Associated Student Government to collect votes in this year’s school senatorial elections. Students could vote in the elections through a link on the app or the website. 

Weinberg senior and ASG Speaker of the Senate Kaitlyn Salgado-Alvarez noted that the ’Cats on Campus platform does not allow students to rank their senators like Wildcat Connection did. Instead, students could only vote for their first choices, she said. 

While this can limit democratic participation, Salgado-Alvarez said it made determining who won the senate elections simpler because she could simply look at who won the majority.

“I was concerned that I had to set aside several hours to look through the data, but ’Cats on Campus just told me it automatically,” Salgado-Alvarez said. 

’Cats on Campus also has other interesting features that organizations have yet to explore. 

Lattal said he wants to start looking into a feature of the app that tracks member engagement data and presents information on events each user has attended and checked in for, forms they’ve filled out and the different tasks they’ve completed. 

“I think that’s really exciting for the future, so student leaders can see that type of engagement from their peers,” Lattal said. 

Email: [email protected] 

Related Stories:

— ASG Senate fast-tracks two emergency constitutional amendments to fill vacant seats

— By the Numbers: Student Activities Finance Committee’s club allocations, over the years

— Northwestern’s Medieval Combat Society brings Middle Ages-style duels, fun to campus