Thursday, February 5, 1998
Forum lets student groups interact, connect
STUDENT GROUPS: Leaders try to find ways organizations can pool
assets, provide better service to UCLA
By Stefanie Wong
Daily Bruin Staff
This year’s campus interaction forum, held Tuesday, was an
opportunity for student organizations to come together and build
partnerships and relations through dialogue and communication.
The conference was an opportunity for "organizations to mix and
learn about each other’s programs," said Mandy Sommers, vice
president of the campus relations committee of the Student Alumni
Association (SAA).
This year’s program not only addressed the need to co-program,
but various speakers also covered issues such as marketing and
advertising, sponsorship, fund raising and networking.
Over 100 student organizations were invited to the conference
titled "Campus Connections," but only 25 groups decided to get
connected.
Campus organizations who did attend ranged from the archery club
to the Saxon Suites Residents’ Association and the Transfer
Students’ Association.
Sommers said that many students could not attend the conference
because of midterms and that there "really is never an ideal time"
to plan events like this.
The evening began with the last minute cancellation of the
scheduled keynote speaker – Alumni Association President Peter
Taylor – but SAA President Jennifer Wang filled the time, speaking
about the importance of co-programming between organizations in
order to maximize resources and increase attendance.
"Duplicate programs hurt the attendance of programs … there
needs to be a focus on partnerships and finding common goals and
interests," Wang said.
After dinner, participants had the opportunity to attend two
sessions of workshops on the various aspects of programming.
Wang was the speaker of one workshop on networking and utilizing
alumni for connections.
During this workshop, the participants brainstormed over the
best ways to network with organizations and discussed the
importance of having an alumni database.
"If organizations don’t have a database or don’t how they should
create one we at the Alumni Association have over 100 support
groups and are actually able to connect the student organizations
with some of the support groups," Wang said.
One of the more popular workshops was on recruiting and
retaining volunteers, which was led by VC Powe, director of alumni
and government relations for the School of Public Policy and Social
Research.
"I learned a lot about volunteers, how to get people to
volunteer in organizations and how to keep them volunteering
throughout the quarter and the year," said John Suehiro, journal
director for the Pre-law Society.
Some of the issues Powe discussed with the workshop participants
were making sure there is good communication between the
organization leadership and the volunteers and recognizing the work
of the volunteers.
"You also need to give volunteers challenges and make sure that
the volunteer environment is positive and inviting," she added.
While most of the participants found the conference and
workshops informational, some were disappointed with how
interaction did not take place until the roundtable discussion at
the end of the night.
"I thought, because the invitation said ‘making connections,’
there would be more interaction between organizations," said Rieber
Hall Residents’ Association President Nicole Luque.
"(The workshops) helped each group with their own problems but I
didn’t see groups uniting in any way," she added.
But despite minor glitches and small problems, most attendees
felt the event was well planned and very beneficial for student
leaders and programmers.
"SAA did a good job of putting it on and if they keep doing this
it will get bigger and better as more organizations become
interested," Suehiro said.
"(The program) will just benefit UCLA in that student
organizations will know each other and what they stand for and
hopefully partnerships will form," he added.
Organized by the campus relations committee of the SAA and
sponsored by the Undergraduate Student Association Council (USAC),
this is the second year of the campus interaction forum.