Jairdin Engen | Assistant News Editor
The Student Activities Board (SAB) at Buena Vista University (BVU) is responsible for planning and organizing various events for BVU students to attend and participate in. Events range from visiting comedians and hypnotists to Pinterest Nights where students can make things with other students. The events are planned and executed by BVU students who do their best to put together events that the campus will enjoy.
“We try and listen to campus as best we can” Alexis Williams, President of SAB, said. The organization works to ensure that the events they are hosting are events the BVU students want to have. “SAB taught me a lot of how much things are, and how limited my access will be after college,” Williams said. Some of the events SAB hosts are costly, and Williams is glad she is able to take advantage of them in college.
SAB is open to opinions on what they could be doing. “It helps having, like, 30 people trying to listen and ask questions, but as far as strategic efforts, we just did a huge campus survey where we gave away a laptop and we had over a third of campus complete it,” Williams said. Over three hundred students in total participated in the survey, which Williams said had a huge impact on their decisions for next year.
“We meet every Tuesday at 9:00 to 10:00, and those are open to students if they want to come and listen to what we’re talking about,” Carolyn McDermott, SAB’s Vice President of Advertising said. “We are always open for students to send us ideas, comments, concerns, anything.”
“We do have an e-mail address, Facebook, and Twitter, and Snapchat, and Pinterest, we have everything that you could possibly want,” Williams said. SAB members are also available and open to suggestions from students. “We’re totally open to having that conversation, and thinking it through, and trying our best.” Williams said there will also eventually be a website where students will hopefully be able to give feedback and opinions.
“A lot of our events we bring back every year… but as a board we also decide on new events. We actually have a committee that focuses on coming up with new ideas for events, for the next calendar year,” McDermott said. SAB also holds trial events to see if certain ideas will work and makes decisions based on the results. If something doesn’t work right the first time they may tweak the idea and see if they have more success.
“In the springtime we do our planning for the next, entire year.” McDermott said. They take into account if the campus would like it and who they think would attend, as well as whether and how the idea would work.
Among SAB’s plans for next year are a number of homecoming events, including a paint/glow party, and bringing back the tradition of holding a block party in the spring. “We’re here for the students, and we’re trying to do our best to give the student body what they want,” McDermott said. “We appreciate them, they’re welcome to keep talking to us.”
