Union calendar makes return to Internet

After a period of inactivity, the Duke University Union has re-launched a new and improved version of its once-popular online activities calendar.

Union President Jonathan Bigelow said the calendar will make information about meetings and events more accessible to the general student population.

"The Union will be seeking to take a more aggressive approach toward cataloguing the events of the University, which includes looking at how students find out about events," said Bigelow, a junior. Student calendars have had a checkered history at the University. The Union calendar originally surfaced in 2001-2002 and was "fantastically popular," Bigelow said, but was eventually discontinued due to lack of use and a web service crash. A Duke Student Government calendar also came online prior to the old Union calendar but subsequently failed.

Partly in response to the "anarchy" of the online student calendars, the University Calendar--a joint project by the Office of News and Communications and the Office of Information Technology--was created, said David Jarmul, associate vice president of news and communications. "The Duke central calendar is meant to be a comprehensive listing of events of interest for Duke's population," Jarmul said. He acknowledged the calendar's imperfection, however, saying Duke News and OIT have been discussing a "more robust, comprehensive calendar" in the future.

Bigelow said the Union calendar was resurrected in part because the University calendar was not fulfilling students' needs for an informal and complete schedule of student-specific events. Many clubs' activities were not listed, he said, because the University calendar requires a representative of the organization to post events. The Union calendar will be updated by Union officials.

Still, Bigelow said, the Union calendar is not trying to compete with the University's own version, but is rather a much-needed supplement. He emphasized that the success of the Union initiative depends on the participation of clubs.

"I encourage student leaders, programmers and social chairs to alert the Union about events that they're planning or see missing on the calendar. Our effort won't be a success unless those who hold events on campus think of it as one of the tools in their publicity kit," he said. "In this time, when a lot of people are complaining about the lack of social life on campus, it is imperative that somebody spearheads a project about what is happening on campus."