Never be an island

I ran for SGA student body president of High Point University last year. I ran on the belief to make student organizations more effective by growing numbers, increasing awareness and fighting battles to improve relations between groups and school administration. Empowering the people.

I came up short in this venture. It was a noble cause but the student body elected someone else; a person that is one of my truly best friends here at the school. I haven’t had the chance to fight for these causes, but I do have advice for some organizations on campuses. Consider this the fulfilment of my campaign promises that I never had the chance to complete.

If you are apart of a campus media group (or any other campus organization) make sure you have connections between multiple organizations of similar interest. Woah, that was a bit disambiguous. Let me explain.

I am station manager of HPU Radio. We are starting out with big ideas. Everything we need is depending on our leaders’ connections. Someone said, “We can get the Campus Chronicle (student newspaper) to help us write news reports.” Luckily, the Editor in Chief of the Chronicle is on our staff. Also, I am a staff writer, organizations editor and on the editorial board. I think we can get the Chronicle to help us out. Ok, one example doesn’t prove my point. This example shows both organizations working not only strengthens HPU Radio but also Campus Chronicle They (which really I involved in too) will also be able to get publicity through the radio station.

Another example or two is needed for convincing? I have them. The Campus Chronicle wanted to attend the ACP conference. We surely couldn’t afford any such trip so we asked SGA to pay for it. Our sports editor is the president of the student senate and wrote legislation that our SGA rep presented to the senate. They approved it, we went on a great trip, we learned great things, it was all great. SGA passed legislation and used money HPU gave for these types of occurrences to make them happy. HPU was happy because we spread our name, etc. etc. Having connections in multiple groups made this situation easy because of our connections.

If you aren’t convinced yet why not another example? My girlfriend is a member of the proud female fraternity Alpha Gamma Delta. They wanted to have an alcohol awareness event on campus. They sent messages, talked to other groups but did not have high hopes on actual attendance. Being a resident assistant, I talked to a few of my guys on my hall and they came overwhelmingly. Not only did this help AGD have a solid image among my guys but also helped these guys have better alcohol awareness. Another win-win situation.

What have I learned through all of this? Never be an island! You want your group to succeed, think outside of the group. You can never be alone and expect to improve your group. It takes connections to grow the group. Use other organizations because when they need someone, they will come back to you. That simple connection helps form better relationships among organizations but also helps build your brand on campus or just in general. Don’t you want people to say, “Hey, I would like to be associated with [insert your organization name here].”

I know this isn’t anything that is setting the world on fire. You probably have heard it a million times. Do you do it? I don’t use it enough. Whenever there is a problem I always think, “What can we do to fix this?” I never think about how other groups can help me. Make a conscious effort to form better relationships. Let’s raise the bar together.