For the past 12 years, WXAV 88.3FM has served the SXU community as its award-winning student-run radio station. Like most college radio stations, however, WXAV is faced with the problem of attracting listeners from amongst the student community.
This is not a problem faced exclusively by WXAV, though. Most if not all student-run organizations and even some of the departments on campus (as last week’s editorial pointed out) wrestle with a problem of attracting student attention.
The question that student-run organizations like WXAV are forced to ask themselves or face slowly fading into extinction is simple: “How do we get more members of the student body either involved or interested in what we do?”
An answer to this problem is to find new, more efficient means of promotion. The more people who are aware of something, the greater the chances of people getting involved.
There are two groups that have the ability to improve and work on promotion: the students directly involved and the management and administration who can influence things on the larger scale.
While it may seem at times that students have no ability to influence the grand scheme of things, the truth is simply that in terms of student-run organizations like WXAV and other activities that involve us students, we do.
The trick is to make our voices heard and to shamelessly self-promote when needed. In terms of WXAV student DJs, producers and management, it’s a matter of going to your friends and family and asking them to listen in.
Another way that students can help bring attention to organizations that they care about is to organize events.
Even smaller scale events can gain attention for the sponsors. WXAV, for example, would attract more positive attention from the student body if they would have events such as the few times in the past year where they set up shop in the diner and took student requests.
The more interaction with the intended audience, the more likely it is that the audience will interact with you.
There is, however, only so much that we as students can do. At the end of the day, it is the management and administration who have the ability to approve events and assist student-run organizations like WXAV.
Keeping with the WXAV example, departments such as Campus Life and SXU Athletics do have an ability to invite WXAV to events as either a form of covering the event or as part of the entertainment.
Also while the bureaucracy of the administration system can seem slow and nonsensical at times, student organizations can work with it to meet an end goal.
WXAV has been communicating with the administration to get WXAV broadcast in areas of campus such as the diner or the Shannon Center, and while they have been so far unsuccessful, the day may still yet come when WXAV gets played through speakers in the recreational areas around campus.
In the long run, collaboration between both students and the administration along with initiative on the students’ part is key towards better promoting the student organizations and activities that we enjoy and are involved with.
The Xavierite Staff