Today, students will have another way to vent to administrators: FixMyCampus. Student government’s new customer support portal seeks to alleviate student concerns by becoming the one-stop shop for their input. Done well, FixMyCampus will facilitate a two-way flow between student government’s helpful knowledge and students’ top priorities. But this system will take considerable support and promotion to be successful.
Concerned students will be able to contact the FixMyCampus team through a variety of electronic methods and will be notified of the team’s progress on their issue via email.
At launch, students will be able to tweet, email or text their concerns to the team and should receive a response within 24 hours. In the future, the team hopes to add a Facebook page and a program website.
While the program takes its name from former student body president candidate Ian Lee’s FixMyCampus proposal, it incorporates elements of Student Body President Mary Cooper’s Triage response team. To lead this lofty initiative, Mary Cooper has selected Dakota Williams, who previously served as former Student Body President Hogan Medlin’s student body treasurer.
Cooper’s decision to incorporate promising ideas — regardless of their origin — into her administration is a strong choice that is too often neglected by student body presidents and should be continued in the future.
Williams and his team have been working on the project since November, but their system will be put to the test this week as the program goes live across campus. Early bugs or service interruptions that leave students waiting for responses could kill student confidence in the system and must be avoided. However, a lack of publicity around the project may result in lower-than-expected student response, which would provide the team time to fix any bugs in the system.
While FixMyCampus has considerable promise, Williams and his team will have a lot to prove if they hope to have the program continue beyond the Cooper administration.
