Thousands of students gathered on North Campus and Central Campus Tuesday evening and Wednesday afternoon for Festifall, the annual student organization fair. Representatives from various campus organizations campaigned their clubs from opposite ends of campus to recruit members as students learned about new organizations, signed up for email lists and collected free items.
According to Devon Vaughn, student organization program advisor in the Center for Campus Involvement, Festifall showcased more than 800 student organizations and more than 15 student organization performances over the two-day period across both U-M Ann Arbor campuses.
This year, Vaughn estimated 8,000 students would attend Festifall on Central Campus and another 2,000 students would attend Festifall on North Campus. Festifall also observed a record increase in student organization participation with 40 more tables than the event last year. CCI, which organizes Festifall, partnered with U-M Central Student Government to offer fee waivers to more than 75 student organizations, who typically have to pay $30 to participate.
The first day of Festifall was plagued by rainstorms. Jane Macaulay, Engineering junior and vice president of communications for Phi Sigma Rho, a professional fraternity for women in engineering and technical science fields, told The Michigan Daily their organization witnessed a lower student turnout than expected because of the storms.
“The turnout was a little different just because it rained,” Macaulay said. “We did have to move inside for a bit and then we came back out. I think when it rained, we lost a bunch of people.”
An IT outage that defined the start of the fall semester also affected some organizer’s tables. Vaughn said though Festifall is an outdoor event and does not rely on technology, the outage lowered the number of expected attendees by 2,000 students from the previous year and could have impacted tabling clubs who needed to print or access materials online to promote their organization.
“The outage has complicated some of the final logistics and preparations for the event, as it likely has for many of the orgs involved, but Festifall’s in-person and low-tech nature allows us to operate with few changes,” Vaughn said. “We have adjusted our estimate down a bit due to the uncertainty caused by the outage and weather, but (our estimated attendances) are well within the realm of possibility.”
Macaulay said their typical recruitment logistics also needed to be adjusted in light of the IT outage.
“Normally, we have people sign up from a QR code, but obviously, a lot of people don’t have Wi-Fi right now,” Macaulay said. “We had to shift so more people (were) inputting (their information) into an Excel spreadsheet rather than just automatically being added to our interest form.”
In an interview with The Daily, Kabir Bhatia, Engineering sophomore and production lead for the Michigan Aeronautical Science Association, said one team member built an Mcard scanner to collect email addresses in place of the QR code typically displayed on posters.
“It was kind of difficult to coordinate … because we obviously communicate on Slack and it’s hard to get a hold of people that you can directly communicate (with),” Bhatia said. “Our recruiting process has been okay because our avionics lead, Evan, wrote a piece of software that allows you to scan your Mcard and will save your email.”
While the internet was restored before Festifall occurred on Central Campus Wednesday, the outage had lingering consequences for Lillian Schneider, Engineering senior and production manager for Building a Better Michigan. Schneider told The Daily she relies on Festifall to recruit new members, as many of the organization’s members had graduated. Though Schneider actually preferred using an Excel spreadsheet to manually collect email addresses than using a QR code, she said the outage’s impact on printers prevented her from printing the flyers she had hoped to print.
“I find that, each year with QR codes, people forget to fill out the Google form,” Schneider said. “With the spreadsheet, students will be added to our email list. I had flyers, and I wanted to print flyers to use, but didn’t have access to a printer and couldn’t.”
In spite of the IT outage, Festifall allowed student organizations to share their purpose and ideas with interested attendees. Macaulay told The Daily Phi Sigma Rho relies on Festifall for recruitment because it is a social sorority without much visibility.
“We are a social sorority for women in STEM,” Macaulay said. “While we are Panhellenic, we don’t have the same visibility as (other) sororities do. Our main goal is just to let a lot of women in engineering and other STEM majors find out about us and just learn about what we have to offer.”
Daily Staff Reporter Sneha Dhandapani can be reached at sdhanda@umich.edu.