On Monday, ETSU held a pro-football rally at Borchuck Plaza between the new library and Dossett Hall.

It looked like a deserted scene with a few students there.

And they had free food. Free food is supposed to draw even the most uninterested student.

Thursday in the same place almost, there's a guy "Preaching" telling everyone who will listen they are going to hell for various reasons....and about 300 people show up trying to beat the guy up.

The thing about the pep rallies is if you hold them for two hours and there is no speaker- then people come and go.

I know. I came and went.

PittsburghBucs Wrote:The thing about the pep rallies is if you hold them for two hours and there is no speaker- then people come and go.

I know. I came and went.

Then the "marketing campaign" that the administration launched in this effort is one that should be criticized.

Of course, I'm sure theres a reason that the administration kept all this stuff low key, didnt release the facts, encouraged the SGA to remain neutral (even though all officers supported the return) and kept the local media quiet on this...

Okay, a few things.

The administration kept it low key because they were never fully behind the effort to restore football.

If they were, they wouldn't have killed it in the first place.

They didn't release the facts- I will agree with that. If Wilsie Bishop's statement that they would raise fees anyway in the future got out- I think it would have passed.

Kept the local media quiet- A lot of it is that ETSU has burned so many bridges with local media that local media says "To Hell With Them."

As a recent grad of ETSU I can tell you communication with the commuter students is really awful. As large as the population is for ETSU the commuter student is completely left out of the loop. I know a couple of commuters that didn't even know there when the vote was because they don't live in Johnson City.

I know in my 3 years of grad school at ETSU I only had class in 2 on campus buildings - Sam Wilson and I think it's call Brown Hall - the one between university school and the mini dome. I would come to campus - often at night park go to class and leave. I know a good number of students who attend ETSU this way. Put that on top of the fact that http://www.etsu.edu is not a daily web browse for me and its hard to get information.

One person I talked to said he never even received and email bia the imail system. I found this to be the case even on the academis side. The communcations department of the school is really awful. Add that onto the fact that no one seems to know the answers to questions you ask them or who to point you to for the answer and you get to what BucGrad2006 brought up.

Its not always that the student is uniterested it maybe that they aren't doing a good enough job to let the students know.

With the signs and the constant East Tennessean articles I don't know how they could have NOT known.

Heck, people have talked about this for four years.

When I had class I drove to the school, parked, walked to class, walked back to my car and left. I never read the East Tennessean because I would have to go out of my way to get one most of the time and it wasn't worth it, except maybe to kill time before class. This is how alot of commuters use ETSU. In the three years I went to ETSU as a commuter this never changed and most of the commuters I talked to seemed to feel the same way.

I am not speaking for on campus residents, just the ones that don't spend much of their time on campus.

I knew about the vote because I like to follow ETSU athletics but think of the large portion of the school that could care less about athletics, which I know is hard to imagine but its true. Couple that with the lack of promotion of campus and I think that explains a portion of the student turnout complaint.