University students have taken to the Internet to voice the changes they want to see on campus.
FixLSU is a WordPress website launched around late February, where students can contribute and post about University issues, said mass communication senior Rachel Weaver.
The site is a method of crowdsourcing, or obtaining information from a large group of people. Since its creation, there have been more than 180 posts and about 48 comments published to fixlsu.wordpress.com, showing students are most concerned about transportation, Weaver said.
“Without fail, every Friday morning I walk to the bus stop and wait, only to find the bus full to the point of bursting when it finally does arrive,” a student posted to FixLSU using the username Kvwilk. “I’m not sure how we could fix this, besides maybe spreading the busses out a little more?”
The goal of FixLSU is not to solve the school’s problems, but to facilitate communication about issues and provide data about what people are talking about, Weaver said.
Though it may seem like activist action to improve the University, FixLSU is actually the alpha test for a product Weaver and other members of the University’s Create Lab are developing to give breaking news back to news organizations, show them where to look deeper into problems and quantify complaints and concerns, Weaver said.
Create Lab is a part of the Manship School of Mass Communication’s Digital Media Initiative, an extracurricular group that seeks to solve a real-world problem for a client.
Prentiss Darden, one of only two returners to Create Lab this year, said the group’s mission started two years ago with the goal to create a product for
NOLA.com | The Times Picayune. Darden said the group is working to develop a widget, or application, that processes the data collected from people’s comments about issues to take to NOLA.com | The Times Picayune in the next few weeks.
The group set up a table in Free Speech Alley last week, showing students the data they had collected so far. LSU President F. King Alexander stopped by to talk to students and looked at their data.
Alexander said he thought it was a good way to get information about student’s concerns; his only comment was it should be change from “FixLSU” to “ImproveLSU” because he said the University is not broken.