Chances are you haven’t noticed the individuals in the student center sitting behind tables representing their clubs. You can walk by one of the six tables and never hear them call out to you at all.
There are many different clubs or student-run groups that can ‘rent’ the space. These are all sanctioned by the university. However, you never hear them, because they aren’t allowed to call out to you.
This has our staff a bit confused. We can ‘table,’ as the Central Reservations Office calls it, but we can’t do any lobbying unless the person walks up the to the table voluntarily? This isn’t lobbying at all. The people already interested in the club aren’t the target audience. They don’t need to be convinced that they should donate, fill out an email registration or take a copy of the publication, in our case.
The university should be a proving ground for the world that we will be released to. We were unable to fully grasp why the student center doesn’t allow a group to lobby to a passerby. Is it to not inconvenience a student in the middle of their busy day? Is it to allow the people playing online video games on the nearby couches to continue doing so in peace? These don’t seem like very good reasons.
There isn’t a point to even ‘table’. Unless your club feels like being used for a free snack they are giving away, you will never see anyone walk up to your table. Our organization, which is a club with an open-door policy, has passed on the opportunity to use the space in the student center this year based on failures in past years that result in people only approaching us for free giveaways. While they leave a name and an e-mail, they are never heard from again. Instead we went to the classroom to try and gain support and hosted a Student Government Association event.
Student clubs aren’t the only thing that are being negatively affected by this conundrum. Last week the SGA elections were held in the student center and online. You could walk up to the computers that they had set up at one of the tables and place your vote. The turnout was less than satisfactory. If someone wasn’t looking for these voting stations, you wouldn’t have found them. There wasn’t a person there telling you to come over and vote, and when most people voted, they presumably voted alone.
If we’re to gain anything from our time here at CCSU, it should be viewed as a practicum and as a glimpse into the life we are going to have. This will include making decisions. Would it be too hard for some students to decide if they want to join a club if they were being asked to? Most of us have an IQ higher than that of a Labrador. If someone from a club tells us to come over, we can tell them ‘no.’ However, the option should be left open. Let a club reach out to potential members instead of forcing them to sit there foolishly. This will strengthen campus and community involvement.