Alexis Williams | Assistant News Editor
Recently at Buena Vista University (BVU) there has been increased attendance in many activities on campus due to a larger freshman class, better marketing attempts, and filling gaps between interests and available student organizations.
As students may be aware of the opportunities to get involved on campus, there are also quite a few events to attend each week. Organizations typically market through social media, posters, and word of mouth. However, organizations have noticed a significant increase in attendance and they do not think marketing is the only tool affecting this change.
Director of Student Activities and Leadership Development, Rebekah Neary-DeLaPorte, who is also the advisor of the Student Activities Board (SAB), sees the increase in attendance at events and activities as not just because of how organizations market to students.
“The larger freshman class has increased the size of campus which would obviously increase attendance at events,” DeLaPorte said.
DeLaPorte places a lot of the success of events and activities on campus on the first year students because of their desire to get involved and the simple fact that there are more of them. This is the largest freshman class BVU has seen in quite a few years.
“First year students are more apt to get involved through events, groups, and relationships just because of where they are in their college career. The fact that they are a larger group on campus just makes this more prominent,” DeLaPorte said.
One organization on campus that has seen an increase in events has been the Residence Life staff who continuously programs for residents each month. Residence Life usually creates events that have a “come as you please” environment so students do not have to stay for an extended period of time.
“Students come to the events, because they are informed by our emails and posters. It also helps that we are students ourselves so we know what other students want—we bring what we think is cool in hopes of having our residents think it’s cool, too,” junior Resident Adviser Egypt Clayton said.
SAB has also been using new marketing strategies that have been very effective for attendance at events. What the board calls “out of the box marketing” has been used extensively this year to get students involved. Examples of this marketing are the trivia games before events, handing out pop rocks before a concert, and having a scavenger hunt with balloons all prior to the event.
“By utilizing ‘groupthink’ in our marketing—marketing to groups rather than individuals, we can reach more people. For example, advertising at lunch will get people talking about it and asking their friends if they are attending events. One of our most successful attempts was when we handed out lucky charms after University Seminar for our magician—that right there was 200 people who have now heard about our event,” DeLaPorte said.
While the focus thus far has been on underclassmen students and marketing strategies it has come to the attention of many organizations that upperclassmen are also getting more involved lately. While diversity in events may play a part in upperclassmen attendance, DeLaPorte thinks that new groups have upperclassmen interested in involvement.
“A couple new clubs have started as interest groups that have been started by upperclassmen—they have recognized the gaps in where they want to get involved, and have then created groups to fill those gaps,” DeLaPorte said.
Clayton thinks that going to events as an upperclassman is fun and enjoys attending events put on by many different organizations.
“It is good to go to events because they are fun, you can meet new people, and there is most likely free food involved. It also helps that events are come as you please so students don’t have to stay the whole time,” Clayton said.
Graphic courtesy of Student Activities Board
