At last night's meeting, Student Council announced its plans for a Speak Up UVA Day to be held in the Amphitheater this fall. During the event, students will have the opportunity to meet with Council representatives to offer ideas and input about initiatives they would like to see Council enact.
Marketing and Communications Chair Eric McDaniel said students will be able to speak into a megaphone and broadcast their ideas, a concept he devised to supplement the banners and chalking which usually suffice for publicizing events.
"We knew we had to do something that was eye-catching in and of itself," McDaniel said. "People shouting into megaphones is, if not eye-catching, then ear-catching."
Kaity Houk, Council director of University Relations, said this event will supplement the Speak Up UVA website, where students can share their concerns and Council representatives can respond and discuss progress they have made. McDaniel estimated that the website currently receives only about 2,000 hits per month.
"It's our way of giving Speak Up UVA a physical, rather than a strictly online presence," Houk said. "This is planned for the fall, when students are still excited about school and they don't have finals coming up."
The Marketing and Communications Committee tentatively has scheduled the event to take place in mid-September, directly after the fall period for Council recruitment of first-year students ends. McDaniel said the event is designed for Council to gauge what issues many students find important. Representatives also will ask students to fill out online surveys about how they think Council can be improved, or what they think it should focus more on.
"A lot of the problems we ran into this past term were people coming up with ideas," McDaniel said. "They were really great ideas but they didn't have a lot of student participation."
Levels of student participation have varied between Council's other initiatives, from the popular Look Hoos Talking to the under-used SafeWalk pilot initiative that began in February. McDaniel said gathering bulk amounts of ideas and constructive criticism during a single day will help Council decide how to best use its time and budget.
"We [will] get the input beforehand so we know if the initiative will be successful before we put in the time," McDaniel said. "All of the surveys coming in from Speak Up UVA Day will definitely serve as constructive input"
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