Editorial: Student organizations bring the student body together through campus visitors

Recently, the campus community has been able to enjoy increasingly more prevalent entertainers and speakers. Over the course of this semester, the community has had the opportunity to hear from world-renowned primatologist Jane Goodall and laugh along with cast members Aidy Bryant and Sasheer Zamata of the popular TV show “Saturday Night Live” (SNL). This week, Chance the Rapper and Jason Derulo will entertain the campus at the Fall Concert, and the University announced Laverne Cox, actress of Netflix-hit “Orange Is the New Black,” as the next speaker of the Revolution Redefined speaker series.

We have had these opportunities thanks to student organizations, like Activities and Campus Events (ACE) and Concert Committee. Students have more influence over the selection of entertainers and speakers because they are the ones who are actually choosing these guests. The organizations have made concerted efforts to ask for feedback from fellow students.

As a result, students are more enthusiastic about the campus visitors, and more of the student body is in attendance at these events. For example, students were flooding the aisles of the Weis Center at Jane Goodall’s talk, and there was even an overflow site.

Inviting more prominent names to campus brings the student body together, and it fosters school pride. Especially in a rural location, the guest speakers and entertainers at these events have the ability to create a higher sense of community within the student body.

These student organizations have also broadened our horizons with the diversity of entertainers and speakers. The University can be scrutinized for a lack of diversity and for having a homogeneous student body; fixing this issue is currently one of the main focuses of the school. These guests help to aid this issue by bringing in new perspectives.

The ability of organizations to recognize the importance of bringing these prominent visitors to campus and the ability to execute this speaks to the University’s growing reputation, especially in our little “Halloween-town,” as Bryant put it.

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