Clubs, organizations, CORe, SERV, Honor Board, faculty, staff, student groups, and individuals are organizing events for your entertainment. All sorts of events, activities, and fun meetings happen every week on campus. Don’t miss out!
How can you keep track of these various happenings on campus? SAC has you covered. Check out the events calendar at calendar.olinapps.com for an up-to-date calendar of events, including recurring club events and big ticket SAC, club and organization events, as well as other interesting activities. To submit your club’s event, email olineventcalendar@gmail.com with an ical, and your event will quickly be added to the calendar. I recommend downloading the calendar to your Outlook. Click “Add calendar to Outlook” in the top right of the page, and follow the instructions. Then toggle this calendar on and off within your personal calendar.
In the same spirit, I created the studentevents@lists.olin.edu mailing list to help effectively communicate what events are happening, as well as when and where on campus they are happening, without overloading other communication channels. You surely saw a few of them before Thanksgiving, since every student is automatically signed up for the mailing list. You can opt out of this mailing list if you choose, but you risk losing out on first-hand event information.
Past SAC Clubs and Organizations Chairs, various clubs and organizations presidents, and I have been kicking the idea of this mailing list around for some time now, and I want to share with you why.
Why is it important for every member of student body to have good access to event information?
You paid for them. Student events are funded by your student activities fee (SAF), the $175 you pay at the start of every academic year. You have a right to attend any one of these events, but first you need to know that they are happening.
They were organized for you. Your peers spent a lot of time and effort putting together a good event or activity that they think will be interesting and valuable to you. Events with strong participation are more fun. For events and activities to be successful, people need to hear about them and participate.
Why do we need this new avenue of communication?
Sure, we have plenty of lists, but none of them quite fit our purposes:
Individual club mailing lists have good specific applications, but are inefficient at communicating to large numbers of people. We need something with a broader reach.
Carpediem is a perennial go-to, but there are a number of problems with it. First, not everyone is subscribed to the list, and second, not everybody who is subscribed reads all of the messages. Third, there are a lot of other carpes that get sent out every day, and not all of them are relevant to the whole student body. Relevant emails get lost in the wash. We need something more filtered. Fourth, as a final thought, “carpe diem” means seize the day; take advantage of spontaneous opportunities. SAC events are planned well in advance. You should hear about them in advance too, and plan for them.
All-Students is another option. Lots of important information is conveyed over All-Students. It is the only universal mailing list on campus. I hesitate to dilute that avenue of communication with frequent emails about student events. Some people already filter all-students emails away. If we overwhelm that list, we risk losing readership and participation when other important emails come through.
So, for these reasons, we have the new StudentEvents list. Please, if you are emailing out event and activity announcements in the future, send it to studentevents@lists.olin.edu!
Don’t like what you see? Please feel free to email me any and all suggestions pertaining to this new list.
