Sarah Mastroni – News Editor –
Collegiate Link is a relatively new website that acts as a digital bulletin board for clubs and organizations on campus to post about upcoming events. As some campus clubs are finding Collegiate Link to be useful in promoting themselves, many other organizations find the problem is that most Southern students do not know it exists and those who do are looking at outdated information.
Eric Lacharity, assistant director of Student Life says the functionality of the site allows both staff and students to interact in a way the school has not been able to do in the past.
“The intention of Collegiate Link is to be a communication center for our clubs and organizations, as well as a source for them to have their own space with the ability to promote their events and reach out to students easier,” he said.
During the New Student Orientation, all freshmen were required to log on to the website, which was developed early this year.
“Collegiate Link offers a digital flyer board that is linked to the Southern website,” Lacharity said. “Clubs can send out flyers and advertise their events.”
Elections for the Student Government Association, which will be taking place this semester, are also held on Collegiate Link.
But not everyone is finding the website to be a help.
Amanda Delia, a freshman psychology major, says she checks in with Collegiate Link frequently, and finds that a lot of the club information is old and irrelevant, and sometimes clubs have no description at all.
“I go on it to check out what’s going on around campus and which clubs may interest me,” Delia said.
“It’s not updated enough. The information is outdated. I even called the information desk about clubs whose descriptions were not clear enough; they just told me to e-mail the club. It was not informative at all.”
Yoyo Collado, a sophomore social work major and member of Folio, Southern’s student literary magazine, says the problem is that the average student just does not know about Collegiate Link.
“Students have to think that there is something for them on the website in order to get them to go on it, but there is,” she said.
“Freshmen, new students, people who transfer, clubs themselves and those who are interested in joining a club—this is for them.”
Although Collado has seen little activity on the website, she still uses it from time to time. She overall wishes more people would take advantage of it.
John Eno of Southern’s Student Government Association says that students just need to get used to the idea that there is a site like Collegiate Link that is there to make students’ lives easier.
“Once students get on to Collegiate it becomes easy to navigate,” he said. “It is not highly promoted to be used by clubs.”
President of the African Students Association, Margaret Ukah, said Collegiate Link has been nothing but helpful.
“It has been very useful; it’s such a valuable source for all the other organizations on campus to know when their upcoming events are,” she said.
“I think that the people who say it’s not useful aren’t on it enough to make that claim. I check Collegiate Link every day along with my email and my organization’s email and find out things way before the average student.”
A useful aspect of the site is the ease of downloading and printing forms, such as van usage and fundraising. Tabs are located right on the homepage.
Also landing on the homepage of Collegiate Link is a “Select your interests to find opportunities” link in which the student can narrow the club search by selecting activities, events and organizations which are most relatable.
And while Lacharity states Collegiate Link is still fairly new, he believes that in time students across campus will be utilizing it completely, heading to the site first to get the information they crave about student life.
“We [staff] knew there was going to be a learning curve going into it. It’s going to take time to evolve Collegiate Link into a program that is known all across the university that everyone can navigate.”
