By Sydney Blake
The school has over 75 organizations that are diverse and accepting to all students. The school offers sports, clubs, sorority/fraternity life and on campus events.
Students utilize and discover these programs more when they are living in the dorms, but as students move off campus or get busy with school and other commitments they stop participating in campus activities.
One of these programs is the House of Divinity modeling club. The club captures fashion by finding beauty and acceptance through modeling. Aaron Reneau, who is a junior living on campus in Defredenburgh hall.
Although clubs are not mandatory for attendance, Reneau says that the club helps create a routine that makes his campus life more comfortable. He mentions that about 20 to 30 people are involved with the club currently.
“There aren’t that many people really involved with or trying to be involved with clubs as much as I feel like people should,” Reneau said.
The school and the clubs on campus encourage students to join programs with flyers and emails, but those can be easily missed or ignored. When students don’t live on campus, their involvement seems to diminish.
Senior Hannah Myers says she has seen a decrease in the amount of involvement when she had lived off campus versus on campus. Myers plays on the women’s soccer team and only lived on campus her freshman year, in Whiteface hall.
Soccer helped her become more connected to the campus, but living off campus can make it hard to find time between school, sports and life. She explained that the sports teams at the school participate in Cardinals supporting Cardinals, where each team will go to one another’s events to support and have crowd participation.
“I feel like playing soccer, I see a lot of people, but off campus I see the same people throughout the week and going to classes,” Myers said.
With soccer, the players try to stay active by going to the gym on campus; where they’re able to see flyers about campus life. Myers shares that she’s able to see more people and hear about more campus activities when she goes to the gym.
When Myers lived on campus her floor was very active and everyone hung out in their common area, where they had a floor Friendsgiving and Super Bowl party. Myers said that she’d go to the building’s bingo night, ice cream socials and slime making events.
But not all were lucky with getting a close knit floor their freshman year. Sophomores Samantha Marcus and Emily Jaffee of Alpha Epsilon Phi, said that their floor in Wilson hall was quiet and not as close as others. The two found comfort in each other being the only girls on a co-ed floor.
Both Marcus and Jaffee wanted to become more connected to the school and started looking at the organizations offered and went to sorority rush events. Once the girls found Alpha Epsilon Phi they were able to get connected with people and campus life.
The sorority held events on campus like fundraisers and tabling in the Angell College Center, ACC, to spread the word about their organization.
Both Marcus and Jaffee said that these events have helped them during their sophomore year because they no longer live on campus. They’ve seen a trend with the participation declining in the second semester and said that the campus was more active during the first semester.
The new first years that come in are the ones they’ve seen the most as they seemed excited and are trying to see what the campus offers. As the year goes on people get into routines, become busy and get over the newness of campus. The weather also plays a part in everything as students stay inside more to protect themselves from the cold.
“If it’s cold and raining out, I’m definitely not leaving my dorm, When it’s the beginning of the semester or the end and it’s warmer out, I feel like I see a lot more people around campus and they’re willing to just walk around instead of going straight back home,” Marcus said.
The weather stops many from being more active and involved. Marcus and Jaffee expressed that now that they live off campus it’s hard to have a reason to go to campus other than going to the library, class or sorority.
Jaffee expressed that her classes help her become more connected because she hears announcements about campus events. For example, some professors give them extra credit if they go to events like Wellness Day or Black Solidarity Day. She also will have some teachers bring students in to talk about a new club or opportunity available for students.
Plattsburgh tries its best to get people involved. They post flyers, send out emails, use social media platforms and inform the campus through word of mouth. When students become busy with school life or other commitments, participation seems to drop.
So next time you see the student digest in your email, don’t ignore it. Take a second to read the information to see if there is something you can do at the school that’s fun or just for the experience.
“If you see a flyer, it can’t hurt to stop by. You might make a friend or two or learn something new,” Jaffee said, “You know, you’re paying this much money. Sometimes there’s free food, too. You might as well take advantage of what you’re being offered.”
