Author: Sarah Corsa
Two of several student teams won and received a combined $500 to implement proposals to solve community engagement issue at Innovate Oxy, the Nov. 16 biannual hack-a-thon presented by Oxypreneurship. A proposal to expand the common room areas to the basements of some residence halls was granted $300, and another plan to turn the wall running adjacent to the Marketplace into an events calendar received $200.
The day–long event began with around 30 participants, split into five teams, brainstorming issues that needed to be addressed and ended with teams presenting a solution to a panel of judges. Representatives from various administrative departments on-campus, as well as off-campus, community members attended to judge the event, distribute the grant and serve as contacts to help winning students actualize their ideas.
“We tried to offer each group something because we think, as the judging panel, they all did a really good job and seemed to have really good ideas and ways that they want to improve the institution or the relationships with the community,” Associate Director of Residential Education Juls White said.
The second winning team submitted “Oxy Iris”: a proposal turn the wall that runs parallel to the Marketplace with the historical pictures into an events calendar. The name makes two references: Iris is the Greek god of communication, while the iris is also a part of the eye and one’s sight.
According to the team’s proposal, rather than posting advertisements for speakers and club events randomly around campus, the wall would consolidate and organize the posters in chronological order by time and day of the week. The wall would be painted using a combination of magnetic and white board paints so that posters could be hung up within magnetic frames. Students or event sponsors could then write below the postings in a comments section to organize rides to off-campus events, for example. A student moderator would oversee the wall, continuously updating the calendar with new posters and taking down past event advertisements while also monitoring the comments sections.
Implementation would require collaboration with a variety of groups on campus, including permission from Campus Dining to use the wall, funding from the Associated Students of Occidental College (ASOC) to hire the moderator and collaboration with the Office of Student Life (OSL). As the graphic designers of many of the posters seen around campus, The Occidental Agency (TOA) could also become involved in the project.
“We’d be working with TOA in terms of having specific sort of advertising templates, so if there’s the color green we’d know there’s a speaker at that time,” Oxypreneurship member and economics major Valdair Lopes (sophomore) said. “It would make everything more efficient and even if you’re just casually glancing you know what you’re glancing at.”
The group’s intention is to create an accessible portal through which the campus can find out about events in a variety of departments, not just the ones within a student’s club or discipline. More efficient publicity could encourage students to attend events across all disciplines. Additionally, with all the event posters in one location, students would not need to rely on word of mouth or a certain poster to catch their eye.
“I think this Innovate Oxy is a good example, even, basically everyone who was there was either in Oxypreneurship, or in [the ECON 151: Entrepreneurial Leadership in the 21st Century] class, or friends with someone in one of those two things,” “Oxy Iris” group member and economics major Drake Berglund (senior) said. “I think you see, in a lot of events, basically, it stays to that group or that department, so this would make it easier for events to become better known and then better attended as well.”
The group could begin work toward the project next semester.
Other ideas for community improvement that were presented included a vegan and organic smoothie business and revamping the daily root email. According to “Oxy Iris” team members and other participants, the event created a space for these ideas to come to fruition when students may not otherwise have an outlet to present them.
Innovate Oxy debuted last spring and is scheduled again for the upcoming term.
“The proposal is something that I’ve wanted to get off the ground, and I think if it hadn’t been for Innovate Oxy, I wouldn’t have had a constructive platform to do it,” Lopes said.
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