The External Affairs Committee — a relatively new branch of Associated Students of Madison — met Monday to bring together visions of better student outreach by setting in place a network and online database of all student organizations.
Tom Templeton, vice chair of ASM, said the External Affairs Committee was constructed at the end of last year to combine the ad hoc Outreach Committee and the United Council. He said the plan was to create a way to formally reach out to students and provide a more personal front to ASM.
Templeton added the idea behind the committee involved finding ways to get students’ attention, get them interested and have an open means of communication to hear back from them.
“We have an ASM website, we’re on Facebook, Twitter and we have a blog,” Templeton said. “But now we want to make that personal connection with students, let them know what we’re doing and facilitate better communication and connections.”
Finding ways to communicate with the greatest possible amount of students was an important topic, particularly through connections with student organizations. The possibility of connecting with the freshmen by collaborating with University Housing will also be looked into, according to ASM Graduate Student Rep. Matt Tobelmann.
“When I think about the social media… the ways to outreach and communicate with constituents — it’s all good — but first you need to find people who want to listen to it,” Tobelmann said. “We can use and develop these tools, but first we need to build a coalition of people who want to hear that and then use these tools to reach them.”
Reaching out to the freshmen audience is especially important, according to Tobelmann, especially in view of the upcoming elections for ASM freshmen representatives held the third week of October.
Adam Johnson, chair of Legislative Affairs, agreed with the importance of personal connections and keeping a database with all the contacts on file to be able to continually reach out to them.
The External Affairs Committee holds open meetings every Monday at 6 p.m. in the Student Activity Center.
