Reform Campus Advertising

Bulletin boards on campus are covered with papers that announce upcoming events. Often, the same flyers appear more than once on a single board. Because the boards are limited in size, some flyers cover others for different events. More poorly taped ones fall off the boards. Especially loud groups spread out their advertisement by making each flyer only one letter of the larger ad. Though abundant, flyers are no longer necessary or justified. The benefits of a campus-wide ban on printed event flyers would outweigh any advantages that they provide.

Flyers cost money that is budgeted to student groups by the University. Looked at as a whole, banning flyers would save considerable printing and supply costs. Groups could use these funds for activities more directly relevant to their missions, or, ideally, the University could reallocate this money to financial aid and other operations that have been imperiled by the recession. How can we justify the wastefulness of ten duplicate flyers on a single bulletin board while we cut back on foundational efforts like tuition help and hiring teachers?

Most groups print in bulk at private establishments like Village Copier. There is no oversight to assure that this massive supply of paper comes from or becomes recycled material. This practice is a blemish on the University’s commitment to sustainability. Moreover, bold action by Columbia to ban flyers can set a precedent for similar changes at other colleges and universities. In the aggregate, the environmental effect of this policy change could prove substantial.

Because of the visible emphasis flyers place on attention-getting, clubs are more likely to prioritize the interests of passerby students over those of their members. When I asked the editor of a student publication how to establish a Web site on campus, she first suggested posting thousands of flyers. Behind this advice was an assumption that advertising as an activity had more to do with its legitimacy than the activity itself. This attitude often leads groups to divert members away from what really interests them toward the tedious job of posting flyers. The effort is misplaced. It tacitly values other people’s support for our activities above any intrinsic merit these activities hold for us. While reducing the stock we place in an outsider’s view of our activities will not be so easy as banning flyers, gratuitous advertising displays surely encourage the wrong set of priorities.

But flyers tell us about events. Events would suffer without flyers because nobody would know about them. This, however, is a 1995 concern. Campus advertising can be digital now. Since banning flyers is in the interest of the entire University, the administration should assist student groups in installing a platform for advertising online. This could be a University-wide portal that would list all events. Groups could upload digital announcements that would be on view for the entire community—and public, if desired. Anyone looking for an event could search by date, genre, and other categories. The resources that could be saved by eliminating flyers would compensate for the University’s investment in this platform. Groups would benefit, not just in saved time and money, but also in advertising. More groups could advertise because drafting and uploading one quality flyer is less burdensome than posting a thousand mediocre ones. And this added ease would lessen the bias that printed flyers carry for established groups with larger budgets and ranks.

Prototypes for this idea like Campus Playbook and Postatime show that this digital alternative is technologically feasible. Critics say that no one wants to spend time browsing for events online, whereas flyers get right in someone’s face. This claim ignores the success of current online efforts, like the strong readership of the Arts Initiative e-mail. Second, we cannot fairly assess a digital alternative to flyers so long as printed flyers are allowed. If flyers predominate, the incentives for clubs and students to use these sites are weak. Without printed flyers, students may respond to Web-based advertising much differently because it would be the sole source of event information.

One last rebuttal in defense of flyers might be that they show Columbia’s vitality. They tell visitors we’re alive, that things happen here. On the contrary, these bulletin boards look desperate, like printed spam, and send the opposite message that our main imperative is confirmation from anyone and everyone but ourselves. Even if many pieces of paper persuade us that Columbia is an interesting place, the issue is trivial, and the tangible benefits that would come from banning printed flyers are more compelling than our own self-gratification.

The author is a Columbia College sophomore.