The University’s campus life website boasts a whopping 451 organizations available to students on campus. Despite this impressive number, the University rarely ever advertises them.
The suggestion that over 400 clubs and organizations exist on the campus may baffle students. You’re only likely to hear about a handful of them from your friends. The biggest current vehicle for exposing organizations is word of mouth, and it’s not nearly enough.
The University does, in fact, put out advertisements for organizations. However, the support clubs get from the University amounts to little. For example, as of January 2018, the myLSU site is promoting an official Student Involvement Fair on Feb. 8.
Clicking on the event on the bulletin board brings you to a disappointingly unhelpful menu used only for registering organizations. The majority of students interested in organizations are looking to join a group not
create their own. Unfortunately, the most easily accessed resource is unhelpful to most students.
It isn’t easy to find the bulletin in the first place. The involvement fair is listed sixth out of 14 on the news board. Given that most students enter myLSU to immediately access Moodle, many students won’t even see the bulletin featuring the involvement fair.
Arriving at the page informs you the fair is only active for one day. To make matters worse, the event only lasts from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. during the lunch period. It’s unfair to expect students to be able to make time in a period during which many students are trying to get food in between classes and a multitude of others are in classes themselves. The event taking place on just one day only adds another layer of unnecessary rigidity to foil students’ plans.
TigerLink is another tool the University hides in the background. The site aims to manage your campus activities like clubs, elections and service project. Despite its usefulness, the site is oddly difficult to reach, requiring you to jump through digital hoops on the University’s website or search diligently through an internet browser hoping you know the right keywords to search in the first place.
The lack of resources pointing toward clubs really is a shame. Along with 68 recreational organizations, the campus life website exposes 91 academic clubs for various honors societies and educational resources. Diversity groups provide sanctuary for those who feel marginaized, and faith-based organizations allow religious students to practice their beliefs among friends and like-minded people.
Clubs can be an integral part of students’ social lives and provide an excellent addition to any résumé. Their invisibility in the public sphere is a bane to the
college experience overall. The University should make a bigger effort to promote organizations, or at least provide students with easier access to informative events.
Kyle Richoux is a 19-year-old sociology sophomore from LaPlace, Louisiana.