Editorial
Laziness sabotages Winter Carnival
February 26, 2009
Winter Carnival, an annual event put on by the Traditions Committee, was canceled this year due to a lack of participation and interest. The event, which was slated for Feb. 23 through the 27, was to include a hat and mitten drive, human dog sled race and the always popular lip sync contest, among other things.
The Student Voice feels that an annual part of UW-River Falls history, one grounded in tradition, has been sullied and cheapened by the procrastination and laziness of a few, unnamed people. Looking around campus the last few weeks, advertisement promoting the event was scarce, if visible at all. The poor marketing campaign implemented to spread the word about Winter Carnival was the leading factor to the event’s untimely demise.
Such a poor job of promoting the event is especially inexcusable with all the different ways something could be advertised. There are multiple bulletin boards in every building on campus, sandwich boards in front of the University Center and an e-mail system capable of sending out a mass of letters to the entire student body. The large posters and fliers in the residence halls did not show up until a week before the event, and by then everybody had to be signed up already.
The only way to sign up was to email the Traditions Committee directly, but the e-mail address was not widely publicized and directions on how and where to sign up was missing. The system was not user friendly, and it is hard to believe that busy students would take the time out of cluttered schedules to hunt down information that should have been provided and easily accessible in the first place.
But the planning committee responsible for Winter Carnival is not completely to blame. A frequent and reoccurring complaint heard from students across campus is that there is a lack of activities geared towards students, designed to keep them on campus over the week and weekend. But when an event does come up, such as Winter Carnival, there is such an apathetic response that it forces the coordinators to alter their plans, even cancel the activities. It is downright shameful that any event should ever need to be canceled due to a lack of interest.
Students on this campus cannot complain about attending a suitcase campus if they continually feed the stereotypes. Students on this campus cannot complain about a lack of events if they refuse to participate in those scheduled.
If the events that are scheduled don’t appeal to you, than speak up and get involved. Don’t just sit around and denounce the activities, criticize the people who plan them. Join a planning committee, appeal to a coordinator, write a letter, just do something. There is no excuse for the apathetic to sit high on their clouds of judgment, coming down from on high to chastise those who dare to take action.