Associated Students Inc. passed a motion to enter a three-year contract with OrgSync, a social networking platform for student organizations, on Wednesday.
OrgSync is an online network similar to Facebook that connects all student organizations on campus into a streamlined series of web profiles. The idea of incorporating such a network into Cal State Long Beach was conceived last year, but tabled when senators were wary of its price tag— it costs between $15,000 and $20,000 per year.
OrgSync won out against several other networking competitors, including Student Voice.
Senator Stephen Thomas, who was part of the specialized committee designed to choose between the competing networks, believes that they made the right choice.
“We went through the demos of all three programs,” he said. “We are confident in our decision that we chose the best product.”
Despite the motion’s landslide approval, not all senators supported the idea of OrgSync.
“I’ve talked to a lot of people about this issue, and the response is overwhelmingly outraged that we would spend so much money on something unnecessary,” Senator Jacob Rice said after consulting his constituency in the College of Engineering. “I’ll be voting against it.”
ASI Treasurer Jameson Nyeholt, who was part of the decision committee, said that Rice’s aversion to OrgSync was a result of the engineering department’s belief that it could create something on its own. However, when ASI sent out letters of interest to various sources, the Department of Engineering failed to respond.
Nyeholt described OrgSync as an attempt to “bridge the gap” between common methods of organization promotion, such as word of mouth, and society’s evolution into the digital age, particularly through Facebook.
“The nice thing about [OrgSync] is that it integrates with Facebook,” Nyeholt said. “Whatever you do on Facebook, it syncs up with OrgSync. You create an event on Facebook, you create an event on OrgSync.”
In addition to monitoring on-campus events and uniting club members, OrgSync has an online payment feature, which can be used to collect fees and dues, as well as to purchase merchandise. It also has a feature that essentially builds a student’s online résumé for them as they advance through college. It keeps track of things like organization affiliations, leadership positions and community service.
“[The process is] going to be much more straightforward than it already is,” Nyeholt said. “[OrgSync] saves a lot of paper and it also saves a lot of time.”
ASI plans to fund OrgSync through $47,875 of excess revenue from increased student enrollment, which it will use to pay up front for a three-year contract.
The initial start-up fee is $2,500, with an additional $14,625 for each year added to the contract. According to Nyeholt, the cost of Student Voice would have been at most about $1,000 cheaper, which he called a “negligible amount.”
The main goal of OrgSync is to make communication between campus organizations and their members more efficient.
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