Changes, improvements come to the Crier

The Crier has long been a source of event news for the Davidson community. However, the way campus events are managed is changing as campus information is shifting to InsideDavidson.

A central part of the new system is EMS, or Event Management System. Through EMS, you can access a calendar of every event on campus and even add them to your Outlook calendar at the click of a mouse. It's the same service used to reserve rooms for meetings and other activities, and any student can use it.

EMS is accessible from InsideDavidson, not unlike a Facebook for Davidson news and events. At least that's the plan, as the CMS system (the davidson.edu site we are most familiar with browsing) is, over the long haul, going to be moved toward dealing with external users, like high school students looking at Davidson's admission information.

The role of Davidson-centric news and information, like application deadlines, has been handed off to InsideDavidson. The site will widely serve the needs of students, faculty and staff when it comes to event scheduling and community-wide announcements.

At the end of last semester, the Crier's web-based features moved to InsideDavidson. That means adding events to the Crier and browsing the classifieds and employment and volunteer opportunities all take place within InsideDavidson. That move has enabled a host of new features. Students looking for lost items can specifically browse a lost and found category of the classifieds. People who find the lost items can even upload a photo, and contacting them to reclaim it is as simple as clicking on their email address beside the ad.

With all of these changes taking place within InsideDavidson, the operation of the Crier e-mail will change slightly. Only basic information about events will be listed, with a link to an InsideDavidson page designed by the organizers that can include pictures and descriptions.

Announcements that aren't strictly events, such as recruiting for organizations and projects, can be submitted as an FYI, which will also appear on the Crier email.

However, the social calendar will cease to function as an email, effective within the next few weeks. Instead, upcoming social events will be listed within InsideDavidson.

Evening Operations Manager Ross Lackey ‘11, who manages the Crier and has been heavily involved in the changes, sees these improvements as important steps forward. The fragmented system for publicizing campus events will be combined into a single accessible space.

"If you have a fundraiser or a cause going on, there's one location you can go to, put the information in, and then it will get pulled and go to all the other places," Lackey said. "And the information will be correct and the same in those places."

"It might not seem like it now, but students really shaped this," he said. "It's also important that students know that, although this change is going to occur, their input is still going to be asked for, valued, and changes will continue to happen with their input."