Dismal turnouts due to advertising failure
Since I resigned from my position as ASNIC Vice President, I have begun to understand what it is like to be a student without all of the benefits and why students lack interest in school activities.
As a student, I take all my classes online. Like any other online student, I log into the portal and begin my class work. No going on campus for anything; just classes on the Internet and nothing else.
When I was active in the student government, there wasn’t a time that I didn’t know what was happening on campus. Usually it was because we were the ones planning most of the events. So, throughout time, I always thought, “Why is it so hard to get people to attend an event?”
After each event, we would talk about how it went and how many people attended. Whenever we would discuss the attendance issues, we found ourselves sitting in disappointment because we never got the numbers that we were looking for.
I could never figure out why students weren’t interested in coming until after I wasn’t in the middle of it all.
I began investigating by putting myself in other students’ shoes.
Throughout the campus, many fliers advertise events and numerous students try to spread the message.
If you are not a student who goes on campus or into the SUB, you find yourself not knowing a lot about what is happening on campus within each week.
I feel that many students are interested in school activities, events and theater productions, but without proper advertising to those who choose no to be educated in the classic classroom environment, many find themselves not attending anything.
In all of this, I blame communication as well as those who advertise the events. Truly when advertising an event you can’t just put up a flier or send a little paragraph to the Week’s Worth (a newsletter for weekly events). That’s great and all, but the Week’s Worth is only for faculty, staff and employees of the college, so therefore students never hear anything that is posted in it. Word of mouth or posting something on the portal is not enough either. You must add more ways for students to receive news.
Each day I tried to figure out other options that would create better advertising for students. What I came up with is that event planners ultimately should send out text messages, emails or a Week’s Worth for students. Each of these could create better attendance numbers for the events.
For me, it has been extremely difficult to get a grasp on when things are scheduled. Without having close relationships with those who are involved in planning events, I would never attend another event, and it’s not because I don’t want go to the event. It’s because I would never know when an event is taking place.
I find this to be a recurring issue for the students of NIC. I feel until we get new ways of advertising, we will never be able to attain the numbers in attendance that we are looking for and events will continue to have dismal turnouts.
Opinions expressed in editorial and opinion articles are the views of individual NIC students. These views do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Sentinel, North Idaho College, or any other organizations or groups there-in. North Idaho College is not responsible for the accuracy of statements or opinions shared.
