Councils Launch New Campuswide Calendar

Student council members from Columbia’s affiliates have teamed up to create a campus-wide undergraduate calendar, advertising everything from group meetings to parties. So far, 35 student groups and organizations have participated in this calendar, which debuted nearly two weeks ago.

The new system “allows groups, individuals, and unrecognized student groups to publish and send a calendar through Gmail, which in turn we will upload onto the Web site,” said co-founder Kate McNamara, BC ’08 and VP of communications for Barnard’s Student Government Association. “This way, students will know when clubs and organizations hold general meetings and the idea is that more students will attend each other’s events.”

Unlike the similar Sundial calendar, which is run through the Activities Board of Columbia, this calendar does not require the approval of an adviser to post an event or official recognition of the group by Columbia University. The Sundial calendar is accessible through the Columbia Web site, whereas the new student calendar is linked through the School of General Studies and Barnard College Web sites.

McNamara and Brody Berg, VP of communications for General Studies Student Council, came up with the idea, developed through Google Calendar, earlier this year. Before the new calendar system was implemented, student groups would publish events individually or post events on Bwog. McNamara and Berg both hope the advent of a new social calendar will increase student participation in campus group events.

“There are hundreds of student groups and an innumerable number of events, lectures, and parties. It is nearly impossible for the student body to identify those opportunities,” Berg said. “Many students used to go through a byzantine process to get information about these events, or work through a third party like Bwog. Our calendar system is instantly available to everyone.”

There are currently three comprehensive event calendars on the Internet, not to mention individual calendars published through student groups.

“Any attempt to keep people aware of campus events is wonderful, but it’s very hard to get the word out about events on such an urban campus,” said Kurt Kanazawa, CC ’11 and events editor for Bwog. “There are so many calendars that it’s hard to inform each community about everything.”

Before coming to Columbia, Berg worked at Microsoft for six years and plans to design a custom program for the calendar project. Until then, he said that his main concern was making student groups aware of the project.

“Recently, I’ve reached out to Aaron J. Lewis, who works at ABC. From them, we are getting a list of the student groups and literally going down the list reaching out to groups,” Berg said.

Events can be submitted to cucalendar@gmail.com.

kyle.boots@columbiaspectator.com