Roger Williams University is a small liberal arts institution located in Bristol, Rhode Island programming for an undergraduate population of just under 4,000 students. “Our student body represents an array of people,” Nikki Lombardi, student co-chair says. Kristen Ayles, a Campus Activities Magazine Student Ambassador at RWU adds, “About 3,700 of our students are full time and we are by no means a ‘suitcase school’ as a good percentage of our students live on campus. Our job is to entertain all those people who stay over the weekends and don’t want to hit the club scene.” “The campus is about 20 minutes from both Newport and Providence and is located in a downtown area in Bristol, which is nice,” Nikki adds.CEN, or Campus Entertainment Network has a total of 24 members, which are split into 12 different committees. A couple of co-chairs, a secretary and a treasurer round things out, but what really stands out about how CEN does business is their level of cooperation with other organizations on campus. “We have four reps from the other organizations on campus including the Inter-Class Council, the Inter-Residence Hall Association, the Multi-Cultural Student Union and the Architecture Club,” Kirsten explains.

As that last organization may seem a little out of place, Chuck Stanley, Assistant Director of Student Programs and Leadership qualifies the statement for us. “Our architecture students have such crazy schedules that we find it necessary to have representatives to sit at the table with us just to ensure that our programming doesn’t interfere too much with what they are doing.”

All of the representatives of the board agree that the inter-organizational cooperation in programming helps immensely in keeping things running smoothly. “I think CEN is unique in the sense that we are the only board on campus that has that representation from other sources sitting on our board. Because we are trying to appeal to the largest percentage of our campus population possible, it helps us tremendously to have these representatives, because there are a lot of different needs and interests on our campus. By working with other organizations and also having a very diverse range of chair positions on the board, we hope to appeal to a really large audience on campus and create programs that are interesting to everyone.”

In addition to having liaisons from a few of the many organizations on campus sitting on their board, CEN also participates in regular meetings with the others as well. “We are one of seven large organizations on campus and what we do is have a bi-weekly meeting called Executive Council. The co-chairs or president of each organization attends this meeting and opens up communication with organizations that are not represented in our normal CEN board meetings,” Nikki explains.

CEN programs a huge variety of events, from day to night and small to large. Devon, an advertising co-chair, fills us in. “I think we do just about every kind of event you could imagine. We do comedy & music shows, pep rallies, have a committee called Breaking Norms, as well as Daytime Programming, which consist mainly of novelty attractions. We have a homegrown program called Chameleon Club, which is a club atmosphere safe for students. All of these genres are headed up by our separate committees and really help us keep a lot of variety in the programming.”

Chuck explains how CEN is able to do so much because of its strong student leadership. “Nikki and Caitlyn run the board as co-chairs, then our 12 committees have a chair and co-chair as well. All of the decisions are done by students and kept within their individual committees, so the minutia of dealing with every single event doesn’t bog down the whole of the group.”

A few of the other committees within CEN specialize in coffeehouse programs, films, and special events (indoor/outdoor concerts, major events). The most attended events usually fall under the events that focus on the student body and school pride. “We have a lot of events that initially started out as homegrown programs like the Chameleon Club, the pep rallies we hold during spring weekend and the bonfire, which is a traditional event that we hold every fall for he fall sports,” Kristin says. “Those are the events that are probably our most highly attended and interestingly, yet didn’t even exist 10 or 15 years ago.”

The reason these events have turned into such resounding successes is once again CEN’s ability to get the entire campus active. “We try to involve every other club on campus. Things like the bonfire where we can co-sponsor with the athletic departments are really big events.”

“Another really cool event we hold that is attended by not only a huge number of our freshmen but also a fair portion of our upperclassmen is our outdoor concert during our opening weekend,” according to Nikki. “Everyone is back and getting ready for classes and we really love that tradition because we are able to hold it outside and we know not everyone gets to do that.” CEN also agrees that they have to jump at the chance for outdoor events when they can at appropriate times of the year, as the New England climate isn’t typically all that accommodating.

CEN sees incredible turnouts at their events - especially the homegrown events they say are so popular. “If we have a Chameleon Club Night,” Chuck says, “and we get 1800 people there, we are kind of disappointed. We easily see 2100 to even 2500 on one of those average events. When you consider we are talking about a campus of 3,700, we feel pretty proud. We have most of the campus there.”

Well over half anyway, and that is an accomplishment to admire, though the board says those well-attended events are not necessarily better or more special than the smaller scale attractions. “We may do smaller coffeehouse programs with Common Ground where we may only get 50 people give or take, but that is a solid program because we have different expectations and requirements out of a smaller and more intimate show.”

From large-scale events including almost the entire campus to small and personal performances, CEN is programming for each and every kind of student they have on campus. With a can-do teamwork attitude, strong student leadership and an incredible level of cooperation from other organizations on campus, RWU has an exciting and entertaining programming board that any student can get pumped about.