Following the conclusion of last week’s Associated Student Government election — arguably the most important campus-wide event of the year — some much-needed questions are being raised in OrgSync’s direction.
OrgSync, the campus engagement website with over 450 campuses under its belt, is being cited as a debilitating factor in student turnout, most notably by Student Body President Ben Linzey.
“I would say OrgSync definitely hindered the number of people coming to vote,” Linzey said in The Criterion article “Student body elects first Hawaiian president.”
In the same post-election interview on Apr. 13, vice-president Gabby Gile said she spoke to around 50-70 students who were unable to vote due to confusion on how the site worked.
Students struggled to get to the needed page to vote — and those who did not understand the process likely gave up.
The entire point of OrgSync as a website, one that student funds pay for, is to encourage involvement wherever needed — and yet, OrgSync has done the opposite.
The student body election turnout, though higher than the previous year, is still a meager percentage of CMU’s student body. 901 students voted out of a student body near 10,000. That should not be a celebrated number.
And, the low turnout and confusion showcased by the ASG election is only a facet of the problem.
The OrgSync calendar, while filled with more events than at the beginning of the semester, showcases a few organizations and clubs, most notably, the Programming Activities Council. Though PAC easily holds the most events due to their organization’s purpose of providing students with activities, to find other club and organization’s activities requires a search for their specific group.
Some clubs and organizations post events on their sidebar calendar. Others do not bother to even post meeting times.
Many pages provide minimal information about the group, with a link to a separate website or Facebook page.
Certainly, some of this lack of engagement is “on the students.” However, the lack of dedicated OrgSync use takes us back to the same issue: students don’t want to use the website for the most part.
It’s more convenient to use Facebook, which members likely check more often. New club members may be confused navigating through OrgSync.
OrgSync does provide CMU with a unique service of grouping all clubs and organizations under one site where a new student can search through all of them. It provides secure voting than is far less likely to be hacked than other methods previously used by the university this academic year.
However, much of this information is outdated — either by contact information or meeting dates. The front page of CMU’s OrgSync is needlessly out of date, the most recent post is from January, the second-most recent? 2014. Which raises the question: what are we paying for here?
If the goal of OrgSync is to encourage student engagement, either change needs to come to the site itself or CMU needs to find a newer, easier to use platform.
