Out of habit, I check the events calendar weekly. I’ve felt that the advertising was sufficient at Linfield, what with the repetitive nature of most of it. I don’t look up when I walk into Riley, I don’t check posters on the walls, and I don’t scrutinize every line of each Senate report I receive.
Event advertising, by and large, has become just another aspect of Linfield that I ignore. In my mind, I compare it to the People Fountain or the Observatory It was cool once, but now I’ve become largely indifferent.
Repetition will do that to just about anything. It’s the Achilles’ heel of advertising, since it has to stay fresh and exciting for anyone to look your way.
This year, we’re seeing the opposite. Advertising of new events has been particularly boring this year, even while plenty of really cool events have been occurring.
Look at the posters on bulletin boards. How many times did you look at your bulletin board when you lived in a residence hall? I never looked at that thing.
I’m fairly certain I didn’t attend a Cat Cab until the spring strictly because I had no knowledge of its existence or who was playing on any given Thursday.
Repeatedly piling signs of bright colors is a great way to make sure no individual event stands out. Not the intended idea, I am sure.
Put them up in fresh new places — on doors, bathrooms, and around some classes. Mix it up a bit. After all, these signs are supposed to grab our attention. The more random they are the better chance they have of somebody spotting it. I mean consciously spotting it, not glossing over while trotting around campus with an iPod in.
Has anyone ever missed the bright sign the theater department puts up? That’s good advertising.
We also receive a compiled list of weekly events instead of the daily e-mails we used to receive. It’s a list and one that’s almost identical to the one you can find online. Sending out a list of events early in the week is not that helpful with remembering events for the next weekend. Weeks get busy quickly. Having an e-mail reminder the night before may have cluttered up the inbox, but it definitely worked.
And, no nobody reads Senate reports. The people who care about Senate go to Senate.
Let’s get some ingenuity here. One e-mail at the beginning of the week and a few fliers around campus aren’t going to cut it. We can’t all be proactive about finding out about events for ourselves. Make some snazzy posters and send a few extra e-mails to increase participation.
Don’t we have an electronic arts major here? I wonder if they might be willing to get some valuable work experience. Work with RAs to inform residents and put some weekly schedules in The Linfeld Review. Have a few people come talk about the coming week and encourage senators to bring a list of events to their clubs.
The bottom line is students aren’t getting any information beyond a one-liner on Monday and a small poster in a wall of color.

Matt Olson/Columnist