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BY ROSARIO PAZ

In print | March 1, 2007

In an attempt to dispel the myth that Swarthmore students do nothing but study, ITS, Communications and students are working together to turn more attention to extracurricular aspects of college life.

By late spring or early summer of 2007, the addition of a Student Life section to the college Web site will provide pertinent information about different offices, clubs and services.

The Web site will also offer glimpses into dorm life, the housing lottery process, the quality of Dining Services and even procedural guidelines for funding and organizing social events.

“You will shortly see a student life section on the bar [of the main site],” Director of Communications Nancy Nicely said.

“The dean’s office has the lead on it, and we’re working very closely with them, as is ITS on the design features and some of the content generation. It was agreed to postpone the student life piece until this year … and really give it the time and attention that it warranted,” Nicely said.

After the installation of Dashboard in recent years, the dean’s office, ITS and Communications have been mulling over the possibility of putting together a detailed sub-site that focused on social and recreational aspects of the college experience in which prospective and current students may be interested.

According to Associate Dean of Student Life Myrt Westphal, the Student Life pages will supplement the newly revitalized Web site, which had previously lacked information on the college’s social and recreational offerings.

“When the new Web site came up … there was no student life on it. Students spend a lot of time outside the classroom and there is no representation of that on the front page,” Westphal said.

The architects of the new Web site enlisted several students to contribute their knowledge of campus culture to the project.

“With our friends in the dean’s office, we have put together a small group of students and a couple folks from the News & Information people,” Nicely said.

“I think anytime you can have students talking about their own experiences directly … it’s more valuable to their peers,” Nicely said.

According to Nicely, the goal of the student life pages is “to capture as much as the energy and flavor and perspective of the life of the Swarthmore students as possible,” Nicely said. “It’s absolutely essential to be able to portray the Swarthmore student socially and culturally. That’s where Web sites can be really invaluable,” she said.

According to Diego Garcia Montufar ’09, one of the students involved in generating content for the Web site, the process has involved “a lot of brainstorming and sharing ideas.”

Their group has only met once so far and is still occupied with determining the best way to represent student life on campus.

So far, Montufar has been assigned to write a review of transportation on campus, including the shuttles to and from Target, Genuardi’s, the movies and the off-campus dorms PPR and Mary Lyons, as well as the train and shuttle to Central Philadelphia.

“All schools have good academics … but there are certain things here that we could really portray in a Web page and that could distinguish us both for people who live here and like to know about this stuff, and for people who would like to come here and are interested,” Garcia-Montufar said.

Additionally, the advance of worldwide online access has facilitated the intricate process of college application and selection for international students and students who cannot easily visit colleges across the country.

“When I was applying to schools in the U.S., I found that I learned really very little about the schools from the Web pages. There are a lot of traditions at Swarthmore that we can write about in this Web site,” Montufar said.

Ultimately, those collectively working on the Student Life page will want to incorporate a wider student input.

“We’re going to want reviews and pictures,” Westphal said. “We’d like students’ voices to talk about [their experiences] and students’ pictures to illustrate them.”

The upkeep of the Web site will depend upon the continual addition and update of current student activity.

“Once an agreement has been reached on the front page, that will be created in late spring,” Westphal said. “We’ll have a start, and then we will be enriching it as time goes by.”

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