MSA wants to hear students' comments
June 4, 2008
MSA will reinstall an online suggestion form as a way to increase communications with students after revamping its Web site this summer.
The site, called Megaphone, has not been successful in the past, Missouri Students Association Department of Student Services director Jordan Paul said, but he hopes that come fall, MSA will be able to change this.
MSA has offered Megaphone as a way for students to offer suggestions, compliments and complaints to MSA leaders for at least three years. He said it worked fine until winter semester 2007. He said the problem had to do with where the online suggestions were being sent.
“We weren’t sure if the e-mails weren’t going to the right person or what was up with it,” Paul said. “It was originally designed so that all of the feedback went to the director’s inbox, but it wasn’t functioning as it should have been.”
The problem was fixed early spring semester, and now the suggestions are sent to a new e-mail account that DSS members can check. They will forward the suggestions to the representatives that deal with the specific issue mentioned.
“We’re trying to have a new philosophy,” Paul said. “It used to be really, really director-centric. The director would get all the e-mails and he would reply to all the e-mails too. This [new system] is ultimately more helpful than BS-ing some answer because you don’t know what the real answer is.”
Paul also said Megaphone has not been successful because few students knew about it and used it. He said the Megaphone link on the MSA Web site is “not all that noticeable.”
To make it more prominent, Paul said on the new website they are going to try and make Megaphone more pronounced by putting it on the homepage.
MSA will also promote Megaphone and their new Web site during the summer during Summer Welcome and Fall Welcome, Department of Student Communications Director Billy Eilbracht said.
Eilbracht said they are promoting MSA and Megaphone during those times because they are trying to focus their advertising on the incoming freshmen.
“If we can spur interest in freshmen, we think that down the road it’s going to help MSA’s overall communication with the student body,” Eilbracht said.
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