By Yunshan Li

As one division in Student Life, a main challenge that Student Engagement (responsible for clubs and leadership development relevant matters) meets is they find it difficult to let students know what is happening. One main reason is they do not have their own social media accounts. If they want to announce something, such as an event they are holding, they have to go through a communication team of Student Life that specializes in managing all social media platforms, including Instagram, Facebook and an email that uoft students receive every week – “9 new things that you might not know.” Even though a centralized communication system helps them convey important messages to broader students, as the email title shows, there are only nine things that can be delivered, and there are more than ten divisions in Student Life, which means that students will not know most things they are doing through this channel. It is the same on other platforms. Additionally, the communication team has the right to decide what, when and how to post, further restricting the division’s autonomy in this process. This case resonates with Kurt Lewin’s gatekeeping theory, that people rely on mediators to transform cuntless information into a manageable number of media messages (Lewin 1947). In this process, the Student Life communication team plays the role of gatekeeper.

To deal with this dilemma, Student Engagement has its own newsletter. However, students have to register on their website to receive it, not like the general Student Life newsletter automatically sent to all u of t students. It is also a paradox. If every department in SL has a newsletter, not to mention all the clubs and other student groups, students would be submerged in the ocean of information. Student Engagement is also trying other methods, such as booths in campus buildings and giving out flyers. Another important way for them to advertise their activities is the brief announcement they make at the end of each event. Facilitator would say “We have this event that you might also be interested in next week.” However, the obvious question is, one has to attend one event to know another, which is a deadlock for students who never attended their event. One interviewee, a staff member in
Student Engagement sighs, “It’s so hard to get information out to students, especially when there’s so many, so many students.”

References:

Lewin, Kurt. 1947. “Frontiers in Group Dynamics: Concept, Method and Reality in Social Science; Social Equilibria and Social Change.” Human Relations (New York) 1 (1): 5–41.