We R One

By Sophia Pellegrini, Stella Pace, Chris Carter, Reilly Hughes

Here at Rollins we strive on making our students the best people they can be and to have fun and engaging times with their peers while on campus. Rollins hosts multiple events annually which invites the entire Rollins community whether you're a CLA student, Holt evening student, or any member of the faculty and staff. These events are a great way to bring together the whole community into one location. However, we’ve noticed multiple flaws in Rollins promotion schemes when it comes to other extracurricular activities on campus. Rollins seems to target their CLA day-time students substantially more than their Crummer and Holt school students. This has led to a massive divide in the students rather than having them feel like one unit or a “family” which in turn extremely decreases the amount of internal engagement on campus between CLA and Holt students.  

“SGA meets during Holt classes at 7 pm and I can never make it. It makes me upset they would choose a time when I have a Holt class” said Autumn Rudolf when we asked her if she was involved in any extracurricular activities at Rollins. When we heard this, we thought about how crazy it was that they have student government association meetings during Holt class hours. SGA is a major part of Rollins as it holds four senators from each class and representatives from various student groups. These selected senators sit on faculty committees, including Academic Affairs, Finance, Professional Standards, and Student Life. Now hearing about what SGA does involving campus life, you would think they would have made it at a more convenient time so that those who want to attend can. No matter how many ways we can list about making the internal engagement increase, it starts with one thing and one thing only. SGA. The student government association does have power and a voice within Rollins and these senators should be noticing that the internal engagement of Rollins is decreasing daily. Let's change this internal engagement SGA, we need to do this.

Considering there is little to no awareness of internal engagement within the Holt school since Rollins targets CLA students rather Holt and Crummer students, incorporating mass email notifications sent to the student body or social media posts regarding activities and on-campus events can lead to more internal engagement amongst the entire student body. Actively trying to include Holt students within Rollins events can increase Holt school and Rollins student body engagement. According to the survey results, a lot of Holt students were not aware but interested in volunteering events. Rollins could incorporate such events where CLA and Holt students could participate simultaneously. In that case, it could lead to greater engagement between the two and bring the student body closer as a whole. 
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A way Rollins could make this belongingness and internal engagement increase, even more, maintaining a social media presence is a successful aspect of maintaining this engagement level increasing. Social media brings us closer every day although many do not realize it. We believe creating a separate Holt evening Instagram page and communicating through it about events, could promote more this engagement. Yes, SGA meets at inconvenient times, but we believe this will be a matter of change and the change is beginning now, with us. Once all the extracurricular activities are changed to times that are convenient for the whole student body, promoting on social media will be very beneficial. Not many people realize this lack of internal engagement since it has not been talked about very much. Through a social media presence, word of mouth could instill more voices to be heard about this issue that has come to our community here at Rollins.