1 October 2019
William Pham
As with most typical universities, advertisements and solicitations have become quite plentiful at UCCS. As a promoter of an event, UCCS is the place to go, especially in Colorado Springs, due to its high concentration of veterans, faculty, staff and students who come to campus daily.
If someone were to explore the campus, they would start to notice the sheer amount of advertisements and solicitors UCCS truly has. Advertisements and solicitations have become too much. Every building is filled with posters and flyers concerning things on and off campus, both sponsored by the university and by other third-party organizations. Advertising boards and chalk messages fill the streets, blocking paths to buildings and creating herds of students trying to simultaneously walk and read at the same time.
Just when the sweet relief of escape comes into mind, some guy with dreadlocks approaches and asks you if you are a registered voter. His very presence can annoy entire buses of students. Not only does this man disturb your seemingly peaceful day, but he has the audacity to claim that registering by hand, with him, only takes 30 seconds.
Having students become involved in school activity is great but increasing the frequency of flyers and posters around campus to an unreasonable extent is not the way to do it. Flyers often fill the posting boards to the point that only the newest or the most frequent flyers are seen.
Individuals often believe that having more flyers is better, so they flood the entire board with the exact same advertisement, usually overshadowing other events. Posting boards are also often near one another, so the same flyers can usually be seen multiple times across two boards within a couple feet.
By having so many of the same advertisements clustering the posting boards, it provides a disadvantage towards students who are interested in getting involved in an event or club. A board full of junk is off putting to passer byers and will be less likely to make students become interested in events.
It was only until a couple years ago that UCCS started to filter their poster boards due to a series of hateful and racists messages being spread across campus. In response, the university made it a goal to never allow this hate to spread in a similar way again.
Even with the university approval policy, students often do not care or abide by the rules, so useless ads involving human testing and vacant apartments also bundle the boards. It would be to the benefit of the entire student body if UCCS were to come and filter these types of materials weekly.
Solicitation is also proving to be somewhat of an annoyance at UCCS. Since UCCS has an open campus policy, there are no restrictions as to who can come on campus. A consequence of this policy allows for random solicitors to take a table and plant themselves right in the middle of the campus without any penalty or supervision.
Religious groups often come to campus interacting and sometimes bothering students with specific beliefs. Random unaffiliated organizations also pop up and attempt to convince students to take risky trips and participate in random events.
Flyers should have limitations and be checked weekly so to ensure a proper and fair representation of all events on and off campus. Specific types of solicitations should be welcomed, but oversight and guidelines need to be established.
Ensuring these simple tasks will provide students and faculty with the ease they need when in search of a club, sport or event. Advertisements are a great way to help students get involved with their campus, but UCCS needs to do a better job of organizing it.