“There’s nothing to do here.”
In my nearly three years at Albion, that’s the most common complaint I’ve heard from students. In those same two and a half years, I’ve learned that’s not actually true. From axe throwing downtown to “Ratatouille” taste tests in upper Baldwin, plenty is going on around here – if you pay attention.
In the next few weeks, I will be writing a series of features that explore different aspects of life on and around campus, the “nightlife” for lack of a better term. My goal is to publish three pieces, featuring frat parties, campus plays and restaurants downtown. I’ll be interviewing and gathering data from students about their experiences with and opinions on these different things.
I’m embarking on this project for two reasons. The first is to paint a more comprehensive picture of campus life than we have currently. I want to know what students’ favorite elements of campus life are, and what they wish was different. I think that the administration wants to know those things too, so I hope they’ll be able to use my articles as insight into what students are thinking.
The second reason I’m doing this is to get out of my comfort zone. I’m doing these features for my class, the Pleiad Practicum III, ENGL 304W, and I’m using it as an opportunity to practice skills I want to have in the career I’m seeking in journalism.
It’s important to me to showcase different parts of Albion’s “night life” because I think the college deserves a little more credit in terms of the events and other fun things that they offer. We don’t have the spaces or the resources that big universities do, but I think there’s still some cool stuff.
As the opinions and features editor of the Pleiad, I’m always looking for different ways to innovate and elevate my sections. Features are supposed to be the “fun” stories, the ones that highlight the community and the people in it and are interesting to read. For these features, I hope to engage with the Pleiad’s audience in topics they care about.
I will be using a survey to collect data for one of the stories – and you can find that here if you’d like to be involved! I’ve put up flyers with QR codes for this survey, posted it on the Pleiad’s Instagram and posted it on the Albion Today. I know that my sample of students won’t be totally random, but I’m trying to get the survey out through a few different avenues so it reaches as many students as possible.
I’ll also be utilizing the good old-fashioned journalist technique of walking up to random people and trying to talk to them. My social anxiety makes this feel like the hardest thing to do in the world, but I know this is another thing I need to be able to do as a journalist.
One of the features I’m publishing is about frat parties – and you can tell just by looking at me that I’m not much of a partier. But, to find sources for this story, I have to not only go to frat parties but strike up conversations there with strangers. Again, my social anxiety will pose a bit of an obstacle here, but it’s an obstacle I need to get over.
While this project will be useful for me in terms of my professional and academic development, I hope it will also be useful and interesting to Albion students and administrators. My hope is that these articles will showcase some of students’ favorite things to do on campus and in town, and give students a voice to talk about things that other people might not be asking them.
For example, I see a lot of people on YikYak complaining about the music that’s played at frat parties. Clearly, people want to talk about that, but YikYak’s not really the place to get people to listen to you and take you seriously. Also, complaining about something is not always the most productive way to bring about change. If the Pleiad publishes an article with named students giving specific examples of new things they want to see, I think that’s more likely to get people’s attention. And that goes for the other features, too.
So, in the next few weeks, I hope you’ll check out the features coming your way! And if you feel strongly about any of the topics I mentioned, or know a student who does, please reach out to me via email at [email protected]! I want to hear as many student perspectives as possible.
Talk to you soon!
Leave a Reply