This past weekend, dozens of students from the different colleges joined Student Government, Campus Recreation, Chancellor Woodson and Dr. Stafford in the first ever College Cup. This was an event created in response to the growing gap between the colleges and the campuses, a concern brought up by the student body. What better way to begin the conversation of campus unity and inclusion than by having students who have never met before come together in a day of competition and fun? One of Student Government’s jobs is to foster communication among students, administrators and leaders. This is a very daunting task that many organizations must tackle in order to have a successful environment for students to live in.
The best place to look at how to communicate with others is by looking in the family living room. On Wednesday night, when the plates are cleared and leftovers put away, how do a lot of families interact? By surrounding a monopoly board, playing checkers or going out to play putt-putt. The College Cup is a new way for students to interact, communicate with each other and communicate with their student leaders and administrators.
When giving a speech at the awards ceremony, Chancellor Woodson said it best, “Sometimes, we act like a bunch of colleges joined together by a basketball team.” And he is right. It is important that we take our school spirit outside of the stadiums and RBC Center and remind everyone that we are one Wolfpack nation. Sure the colleges were competing against each other, but there has to be some way of organizing teams and representatives of the University as a whole. Otherwise, you won’t get such a diverse group.
From the surveys passed out and collected from the participants, many of them had a lot of fun and also had the chance to interact with others they’d never met before, one of our goals for the event. The participants gave very constructive feedback; including asking planners for next year to advertise more, organize better, and have less down time, which I think is completely fair seeing as we should have advertised earlier in the year. These criticisms were completely warranted and will help us plan for next year. While things didn’t go perfectly, most participants commented that this was a great first effort of such an event.
Furthermore, participants praised the premise behind the competition saying, “I had the chance to meet new people, compete and have fun.” The participants also had the chance to speak and interact with the chancellor and Dr. Stafford, which we felt was extremely important in beginning the dialog between students and administrators.
At the end of the day, I feel we reached our goal to interact and communicate with students who have most likely never seen their Student Government representatives or major administrators before. If Student Government’s job is to foster communication between the student body, ourselves and administration, why not have some fun along the way? Life’s too short not to. We are one Wolfpack family, so let’s come together like one and take what the day gives us.
