For the first time, the University of Wisconsin’s Associated Students of Madison provided shelter and storage for all interested students during move-out night on Aug. 14, the traditional day all leases end for Madison area apartment renters.
“It was a huge campus collaboration and lots of people on campus were very interested in getting involved in this,” said ASM member and event coordinator Kaitlyn Ziebell.
The event was held at the Student Activity Center that night and was created to address the issue of thousands of students who are otherwise homeless for the evening with nowhere to put their belongings.
Although the turnout was not quite what ASM hoped for, overall Ziebell said she believed the event to be a success. The SAC could have held 269 but only was at about 30 percent capacity overnight, she said. However, around 300 students used the designated parking areas.
After surveying all the students that attended the event, ASM found almost all of the attendees would like to come back the following year and would recommend the event to friends.
While ASM promoted the event in multiple ways, including a Facebook event, Twitter page, link on the wisc.edu homepage and a campuswide e-mail, ASM’s survey showed most people heard of it by word of mouth.
“We definitely do want to continue it and hopefully expand it each year,” ASM Vice Chair Tom Templeton said. “As far as it being the first year, I think it was pretty successful.”
Along with ASM, a variety of organizations helped put on the event, including the Offices of the Dean of Students, Visitor & Information Programs, University Housing and the UW Police Department.
At the event, there were many volunteers available to patrol the parking lots and look over the belongings of students. No break-ins were reported.
Associate Dean of Students Kevin Helmkamp, as well as all of ODOS, collaborated with ASM to ensure the success of Move-Out Night, and Helmkamp even volunteered to patrol the parking lot for a few hours.
“There has been no other considerable effort like this to address move-out,” Helmkamp said. “It really is an excellent example of ASM providing a pragmatic service to students.”
He added he saw the event as a great success, especially for being its first year and believes it demonstrated an excellent partnership between students in ASM, student organizations and university and staff members.
Besides the large amount of community support and volunteers, Ziebell also mentioned the large amount of press the event received from media such as WKOW television, various radio stations and The Capital Times. He said the extra press was definitely a contributing factor to the event’s success.
Discussions of how to improve the event and reach more students are underway as ASM plans to hold the event in the future.
“What we always hope from any event is for more participation and more active involvement from the student body,” Templeton said.
