Writing Around the Residence Halls
The residence halls, and the surrounding areas, of Case Western Reserve are filled with posters, flyers, billboards, messages, and pictures. These posters usually advertise something school related, such as fraternities and sororities, tutoring sessions, or meetings of different clubs and groups. Occasionally, I will see some flyers describing an off-campus event, like a trip to the beach. These constantly changing signs represent the character of campus life by presenting a magnitude of things to do on or off campus. Additionally, on my residence hall’s floor, there is a colorfully decorated corkboard with some food recipes from Wikipedia. Not all of the displays around the halls are as nice as the one on my floor, but they all provide information and something to look at; however, dissimilar to what most poster and flyer-hangers believe, these advertisements rarely receive a thoughtful review.
Due to the current upsurge of specialized websites and online social networks, including Facebook and MySpace, students no longer solely rely on flyers, posters, and their substitutes for information. By chance, a student may walk by an advertisement for a certain club that they want to join and obtain information about that club. However, most of the time, people do not rely on flyers circulated around the residence halls; students tend to rely on the Internet instead. For example, a person is not going to go around to all of the billboards to search for information about a club they want to join. Rather, that person will search online for that club’s information. This way is not only quicker, but, also, it will provide the student with more information, for more information can be stored on a website than on a piece of paper. On the other hand, online social networks provide the building ground for new relationships, groups, and friendships. People who are on these networks can write to each other, share pictures, and create groups, such as a videogame group where people who like videogames can chat with each other about their gaming stories. Moreover, on the Facebook network, people can write on each other’s “wall.” The “wall” is shown on the front page of everyone’s profile and is a place for people to write each other messages. These messages can include simple greetings to what time a social gathering starts. Teenagers and young adults spend a lot of time on these networks, and, thus, they provide a great and simple way for people to communicate with each other. Overall, because of the current Internet boom, students do not depend as much on flyers for information as they do the Internet.
Even though the Internet is where most people tend to look for information, flyers and posters have not been replaced completely. Yes, the majority of information in the world can be found on the Internet, but the surprise of finding the information you are looking for on a post on your way back from classes is still very rewarding. When we search the Internet for information, we expect to find it; when we are walking back from classes, we do not expect to find when the lacrosse club meeting begins, for example. The writings around the residence halls still define the campus life, but the writings found on peoples’ “wall” define it more; we have entered a new age of society, one where online networking is key. Online, people have formed groups, clubs, networks, and websites because technology has made these things easily accessible to everyone. The old-fashioned flyer will sometimes be noticed but a message posted to someone’s “wall” will always be read.
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