[ad_1]
Leadership, Engagement & Experiential Development (LEED), formerly Student Leadership and Implication, hosted the annual Student Engagement Fair (SIF) on September 3. The event allows Hopkins students to engage with more than 400 student-run organizations and departments on campus, making it one of the biggest events of the school year fostering student participation.
Although the University initially announced plans to host the event in person, the event has moved online to HopkinsGroups. In an email to The News-Letter, LEED Director Calvin Smith, Jr. explained that insufficient space was the main reason for switching to virtual format.
“As a rule, the student participation fair is held at the Ralph O’Connor Recreation Center, [which] is currently under construction, ”he wrote. “Despite all the efforts of our colleagues, the building will unfortunately not be completed on time.
Some said The Newsletter that they had become accustomed to online events and supported this change. In the second year, Angelo Huff appreciated the ease with which he was able to observe the different student organizations.
“I think the virtual experience was perfect. I was able to see the different organizations and also meet different people. It was definitely easier than SIF in person, ”he said.
Others, like sophomore Diego Kaune, were disappointed with the University’s decision; With the return of students to campus, many expected to see more in-person events as life on campus returned to its normal course. Kaune expressed his frustration with the virtual format in an interview with The News-Letter.
“There haven’t been a lot of interactions,” he said. “In person would have been much better, and there was hardly any publicity for [an online] SIF. “
For freshman Sun Moon, the virtual format made it more difficult to build meaningful relationships with club members, but he felt that browsing CampusGroups allowed him to explore many more clubs than he did. would not have been if the event had been in person. However, he also reported that he encountered technical difficulties during the event.
“The Hopkins groups were crashing every 5 seconds when I tried to log into SIF,” he wrote in an email to The News-Letter. “After a while I was able to browse the clubs and show interest.”
Second-year student Zara Hamid, tournament director for the Hopkins Undergraduate Debate Council, also expressed frustration with the event’s website during the first hour of her recruiting shift.
“It was difficult because CampusGroups kept crashing, so we didn’t generate as much interest as we expected,” she said in an interview with The News-Letter.
But despite these technical difficulties, Hamid said the students were still able to engage with club members and the debate team was able to organize trials during their event at the booth as they planned.
Yasheel Pandya, captain of Blue Jay Bhangra, noticed that conversations with students were fewer and shorter than in previous semesters in an interview with The News-Letter.
“Because we were online [last year], and it was everyone’s form of communication, people were more willing to get to know other people, ”he said. “[This year] people seem to already have in-person groups, so it’s more difficult to convey information online when the in-person part is already available.
Blue Jay Bhangra hosted an in-person event on September 10 near the Breezeway to complete their virtual recruiting. Pandya noted that it was much easier to have conversations with interested students both outside and in person and asked why the University had not tried to organize SIF in one of the four quadrilaterals of the campus.
Smith said the University intends to plan several in-person events later in the semester. Smith said the university will host an in-person SIF in October once construction of the recreation center is complete. Additionally, LEED will be hosting a block party – which will feature several cultural and performance groups – near Homewood Apartments on September 30.
Huff and Kaune both expressed their enthusiasm for an in-person SIF later in the semester.
“It would be a great way to meet people and really experience a real student fair in Hopkins,” Huff said.
Student Government Association Executive Vice President Breanna Soldatelli also supported the University’s efforts, saying it should be possible to organize a student participation event in accordance with University guidelines.
“It will be very good for the morale of the school, especially for new students who have never met the real Hopkins,” she said in an interview with The News-Letter.
[ad_2]
Source link