This post is a long time in the making. However, before I begin, I want to start by saying that I have the upmost respect for the current Marketing team, especially Ms. Kailene Dadey and Ms. Sam Wheeler, both of whom I worked with as a BSG Marketing Coordinator in 2009-2010. During my tenure with the department, now labeled “Student Relations,” I was involved in almost every major marketing campaign that went through the office including most of our largest programs and events. I can say with certainty that none of our success that year would have been possible without Kailene at the head of the department.
With that being said, the remainder of this post is a criticism of BSG’s marketing this past semester and what I see as failures within the administration to do as they promised in creating (and utilizing) the “new” Student Relations department. What I refuse to do is place any blame on Kailene and the other members of the marketing team—but I will address this later. Ether way, I would like to thank Kailene and those who I have worked with at BSG and I hope that they don’t take offence to my comments here.
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One of the greatest failures within the marketing team during the time I was there (and I believe those involved would agree) was the complete and utter lack of communication between then president Evan Brengel and the marketing department. For those of you who have worked in a department where the orders come from somewhere above that departments leadership then you know what I am talking about. For us, as a team, it was difficult to near impossible to come up with creative campaigns with little to no knowledge of the events and programs we were being paid to promote. I can remember countless occasions when Kailene, even after meetings and meetings with the administration heads, would have no work to give us—simply because no one knew what the hell was going on. This was not a failure of our department; it was a failure of the organization’s leaders.
Not having an insider view of this administration’s daily operations, I do not know for sure if this is still the case—but I have my suspicions. You see I have a theory that things in Brockport Student Government do not change all that much from year to year. After each election cycle the people brought into the fold have already been there to some degree or another; and in reality, do little to change the structure or direction of the organization. I have an assumption that little changes in terms of organizational structure and in turn little changes in regards to decision-making or communication between actors, etc. Therefore, it doesn’t seem improbable that there is still little to no communication between the higher ups of BSG and the lowly department just trying to do their job.
With that being said there are other things that point to a failure within the organization to utilize (or maybe even recognize) the enormous talent in that department. For starters, I have seen less advertising material on campus then I ever have since starting at Brockport two and a half years ago. To some regard, this can be explained by the decrease in the number of staff in the department (something I find exceedingly unexplainable), but to an extent I cannot believe that the current team would let that stop them—certainly that wasn’t so in the past. It is more likely (to take a minimalist approach here) that the issues of communication have persisted leaving the student relations team to fend for themselves.
I am also sorry to see that that the BSG twitter account, @BSGbuzz, has seen no posts since early September and like it or not (I don’t) the Facebook account seems to have become the primary means of advertising BSG events but has a mere 750 friends by last count—even less, 477 as of 3AM today, “like” the BSG Facebook fan page. If you don’t want to do the math, that is 8.7 percent of the total student population being friends of BSG and 5.6 percent “liking” the organization’s fan page. Even the twitter account for the Off Campus Representatives, @bportoffcampus, (while not under the control of student relations) has yet to be used once since it was created last semester.
And on the topic of websites, while apart from the student relations department (but by all accounts a close cousin), the Webmaster and AV coordinator also should be accounted for here as well. I have worked closely with the BSG Webmaster and can attest that Chris is a valuable asset to the organization but for the life of me I cannot understand what the AV coordinator does. A quick look at the BSG website media section and the organization’s Facebook and YouTube accounts show no evidence that the AV coordinator actually does anything—no videos have been added since the Hitchens-Wolpe debate over a year ago. Again, where many might be quick to blame those in charge of BSG’s marketing, I am prompted to see this as a failure of the organization and its leaders; especially President, and head of the executive branch, Eric May.
Finally, we come to what I see as the biggest failure of this administration so far as marketing is concerned—where are the surveys? I, as an off campus student forced by my schedule to stay of campus eight or more hours a day, spend a great deal of my time (upwards of three or four hours on some days) in the Student Union and have yet to see one person from BSG surveying the student body. Even the newest group by BSG on Facebook admitted that no such survey had been administered to date. I hope to god that this was just an oversight because this administration was so busy making good on their other promises; but somehow I very much doubt it.
So here we are with an administration that campaigned on the slogan “You have the say,” in fact, NOT GIVING STUDENTS AT BROCKPORT THE SAY (emphasis fully intended). But I will say it again; this is not a failure of the student relations department but the fault of this administration not living up to their promises, no their obligations, to the students at this college. Listen, I haven’t yet gone so far as to say this, but now I think it is time to come out with it already—this administration, namely Michelle Paul and Eric May, have singlehandedly destroyed any promise that BSG will represent students at The College at Brockport. Marketing, student relations, or whatever you want to name it is essential for getting information out to students and, to a large extent, getting information back from your constituencies—to ignore this simple fact is to ignore your entire constituency.
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A direct appeal to Eric and Michelle:
What started as a criticism of your marketing strategy (or a lack there of) has proven to be just another example of the failures within your administration to act as the leaders of Brockport Student Government. Being leaders at this college, being people that others look to, goes beyond writing concert suggestions on t-shirts and your office door. It is about knowing the people you are representing and being able to quantify your efforts towards fulfilling their needs. If I were, as I had once planned to be, still a part of Brockport Student Government—a part of your administration—I would still expect that you take the time to hear what students want and respond accordingly. It is sad that this is not the case, and I truly believe that this is going to be an issue your administration and whoever comes after it will have to account for when we vote for the mandatory fee next semester. For now you can get away with not caring, but at some point you will be called to account for yourselves and will be unable to do so.
