University Chronicle

Issue date: 2/3/10 Section: Campus & Life

If you have something happening on campus, a fundraiser, a play, a poetry bash, etc, how do you get your information out? There are the posters put up by the student Activities Office, a press release sent through the communications office; or even here in the Chronicle. But what if you want or even need more than what the school can offer you?

Sure, hanging posters around town can help, but posters can only do so much, especially when only a limited amount of places will allow you to hang posters in their windows or on their own bulletin boards.

Is there anything we can do but wait for the official word to spread even if it is far too late?

The first problem is posters. There are many student activities going on around campus at any given time, at least by what I see as I pass the bulletin boards. And the correct thing to do is to take the posters you or your group has designed to Student Activities for them to post themselves. Apparently they have students they pay to do that sort of thing.

The problem is this: sometimes your posters get lost in the mix. I have seen many posters not posted until long after the event is over, if at all, and some posters precariously placed on the edge or over other people's posters. To me, this doesn't seem like a very workable situation.

Your group or event is not given the attention it is due and you don't get the crowd or audience your affair deserves.

Also, what about the student workers taking these posters to Student Activities? Technically, some of them, who may be working in other offices, are being paid by the university as well. Wouldn't putting up posters for their job fall under that category? The school is paying either way, does it matter and/or is it fair to deny the student the rightful due?

But that's not the point. The actual point is, I believe, we need a better system to get our information out there onto campus and beyond. I have seen a few press releases/articles appear in the Community Common but they are few and far between. Is there a reason we don't get any in the Daily Times? Or even on one of the radio stations around here like WPAY? Are we allowed to do that? Or does it cost too much money to have a radio spot put out there.

I have talked to many a person who has heard after the fact about shows going on in the Vern Riffe Center that they would have loved to see but had no idea what was going on. Not enough people pass the school marquee or come on campus to pick up a Chronicle.

Plays put on by the theatre department here on campus have, until recently had poor turnouts. I believe one of the main reasons is the lack of publicity. No one hears of the shows until it is too late, or no one outside of the school even knows about it. Shouldn't school publicity help encourage and support the students revealing themselves so publicly and personally?

If a club or fraternity/sorority has a fundraiser, how many people on campus actually participate? Wouldn't the school make more money on productions and charities benefit more financially if the world outside Shawnee had a chance to hear of all the wonderful things going on right on their front doorstep?

Our school has so much to offer. We need to find a way to get the word out that Shawnee State University is a force to be reckoned with and a place of growth for incredibly talented people. Let's not waste it behind an inadequate publicity structure.

Editor's note: The Community Common and the Portsmouth Daily Times are both properties of Heartland Publications. It is the decision of their editorial staff whether or not to run a press release from the university or otherwise. Likewise, airtime on the radio is equivalent to money in the bank for media properties. Running unpaid press releases essentially constitutes free publicity, which may or may not fall within the business constraints of producing the day's news. While the University Chronicle tries to print as many event announcements as we can, at least in the calendar section, we do not have the reporting staff to be able to dedicate a writer to each and every activity on our campus. The best way to get an item in the Chronicle is to email it to the editor at chronicle@shawnee.edu. Better yet, submit your group's own press release. Publication is not guaranteed, but this can greatly increase your chances. If you absolutely must have something appear in print, email for paid advertising rates. It is always the disgression of the department or group funding the ad whether or not a student organization will be allowed to advertize using university funds.

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