It seems activities boards everywhere have felt the economic squeeze in recent times and for many that means tightening the belt or ending up in big trouble at year’s end. It is sink or swim in the competitive world of budgetary dollars and some schools are getting creative without sacrificing the entertainment delivered to the students.

Marshall University is one such institution. With innovative new ways of splitting costs and essentially going into business themselves, the Marshall University Campus Activities Programming Board has found a way to evolve and a way to thrive.

Marshall University, located in beautiful Huntington, West Virginia, along the banks of the Ohio River, was founded in 1837 and has a total student body of about 16,000. While Marshall tries to cater its activities programs to the entirety of its student population, they understand that sometimes that just isn’t practical or possible. “We certainly try to do our activities for all of our students, but we realize that the students who take advantage of our programs are generally those who live on or close to campus,” says Andy Hermansdorfer, Director of Student Activities at Marshall.

The programming board at Marshall is open to all students, with the only condition for membership being attendance at their weekly meetings. “We have a group of about 40 students that come to all of our meetings, but that number can be as high as 80.”

The board is structured without standard committees, but has a president and vice president who facilitate in making cohesive buying decisions with other members of the board. Occasionally a special committee will be formed to tackle a particular event, but in general the effort is collaborated between all the students on the board, regardless of genre. Once they have made a tentative decision about a performer or event, they bring the idea to Andy who issues final approval. “It is the students who choose the activities. I will guide them to make the best decisions, but we have a really sharp group. They are well aware and conscious of all the people they are programming for and they don’t want to provide the same old entertainment for one particular group of students over and over. They are very intentional about making their programs diverse.”

Marshall typically holds one large event per semester and for them, tapping into what students really want to see for this big event has been the key to success. Marshall’s activities board continually makes strides to stay interactive and in touch with their students. “We will survey our students to find out what type of event they want and typically the first and second place choices are a close match between a major concert or a well-known comedian.”

Comedy won last semester’s poll and students got the chance to see “Chappelle’s Show” veteran Charlie Murphy, brother of Eddie. “We did a free show with Charlie for students. This semester, music came out on top, with another free event for students in the form of a major concert by Lonestar and Trick Pony. We actually blocked off a street downtown for that event.”

Marshall understands the financial pressures students face and that is why they go to great lengths to ensure that not only are major events free to students, but also most of the other events as well. The board itself feels the financial pressure as well and they are not alone in the marketplace. Coping with limited budgets is something all schools are facing and sometimes getting creative is the only solution. “Our money comes from a student activities fee. Unfortunately we don’t get a lot, but we feel that if students have already paid that fee included in their tuition, then our events should be free for them. Sometimes it isn’t possible and we do have to charge students, but that is very rare and always a nominal cost for them.”

The creativity with entertaining dollars on Marshall’s campus that has allowed them renewed flexibility comes in two primary forms, homegrown entertainment and partnerships with local sponsors. “Our budget has been cut several years in a row, so we are very aware of our limitations. We try to spend that money very efficiently and very wisely. A great example of one of our key strategies has been centered on us taking control of our own shows. We have actually started buying our own equipment when it is at all practical, because then we can do repeat shows at little or no cost. An example would be the companies that do these touring X-Box tournaments. They are going to charge between $1200 and $1400 to do that tournament. Our programming board weighed the cost of how much it would be to go out and buy our own game consoles, store it and set it up versus the one time rental fee.”

The formula has proven successful for Marshall, as they now have not only regular X-Box tournaments, but the same event with Playstation and others. “We have our own karaoke system and our own DJ equipment so we don’t have to hire people to come in and do our sound anymore. We also have used this concept with some of the smaller scale novelty attractions like sand art. While you can easily hire a company to come in and do it for you, we do it on our own and save quite a bit of money.”

Because the decisions are concentrated so heavily on being a group effort, students have been able to make these buying decisions wisely and this has resulted in the board being able to hold some of their most well-attended events completely independently. “We hold our video gaming tournaments about once a month and they are always very popular.”

Andy is quick to stress that they don’t have consistent, regular pre-planned game tournaments every month. The same close-knit community ties that keep the board in touch with students about what they want on campus is the same system that allows events to crop up any time and on short notice. “One of the things we have learned about our students is that they are very spontaneous and they don’t necessarily plan their entertainment activities a week or a month in advance. It is something that usually happens really quick and on the spot. So what our board has started to do is kind of randomly getting our tents and screens and sound systems and gaming consoles together and setting them up in the student center or on the plaza. Our students come to these in droves. Whether they are walking to lunch or going to class these types of impromptu attractions always seem to do well, especially with the power of word of mouth on our campus.”

Which brings us to the promotional practices for Marshall’s Student Activities Programming Board. It seems no two campuses think alike (or get the same results twice) for any given means of promoting their events. Some campuses have popular radio stations or highly read papers, some artists send great posters and flyers to make the job easier (and to invest in their own success), some schools just wait and see. But here at Marshall, it once again all comes down to community- with just a little help from technology. “One of the main goals of our programming board is to improve our sense of community at Marshall University. A lot of the programs we choose are selected for that very reason– we want that event to bring everyone here closer together. It may be a be a speaker or team building or a program that just does ice breakers so the students can get to know each other. We now sponsor student tailgates, to get everyone to go to the games together, hang out and cheer the team on together, just to build community.

“As for how we promote our activities, we once again surveyed our students, this time to find out the best way of communicating our events to them. Their number one response was email. We have found several ways to get email addresses and use the internet to get the word out to our students.” It’s an easy, cheap and effective way for Marshall to market to students and simply let them check out the artists themselves by visiting their respective web pages.

Marshall does about 40 events per semester on average, from their own homegrown events to major talent. Yet another student survey allows students to rank the days and times they would prefer to attend activities. “Typically, the days that are ranked the highest are during the week, but we do program on the weekends as well. The events that we spend more money on are on the weekends, because we know students don’t have class conflicts and we are trying to get the highest attendance possible. Our large events like that may include a live show or artist, a formal, or even a casino night.”

The casino night in particular has an interesting story at Marshall University. “The casino night was the original idea of one of our resident advisors. They wanted to have a formal event that was open to all Marshall students. They saw the fraternity and sorority formal events and everyone got to get really dressed up and have a nice night, but there wasn’t anything comparable for our non-Greek students.”

The board once again partnered with another student organization, this time the resident services department and the idea evolved into a formal dance and casino night. “We were trying to offer our students a really special night with a lot of variety. We had food, dancing with a DJ, the casino games and even a comedian, so we kind of offered everything.”

Like at so many colleges, comedy works well at Marshall, in part because they don’t have to worry about the competitive edge. “There is only one other venue within 50 miles that can provide students with live comedy, so we kind of have that niche. There are a lot of different venues in the area that provide concerts in all genres. That is a much more competitive segment for us, which leads us to choose our music acts very carefully based on what students have told us.”

Marshall also hosts a fair amount of speakers and awareness education events, and they generally partner with academic departments. “To make those events a little bit more successful, we try to tie them with an academic department or larger student organization. We brought in the program “Poor Nation” last year and partnered with our Campus Crusade For Christ group. We paid half and they paid half, which makes things easier on our budget and allows us to enrich our students.”

Novelty items work well at Marshall too with Andy citing keepsake value as a major incentive. “Our board likes to do events where they can give something to students to take home and remember the day. Photo mouse pads worked well, as do t-shirts and collectibles like wax hands or sand art.” Like the homemade sand art event, Marshall has taken the reigns with another attraction that will take students back to younger days at the fair. “We bought our own snow cone machine and on hot days we just randomly go outside, set up a tent, play some music and hand our students snow cones. Or, they may stay and make their own snow cones and we use it as a chance to talk about our upcoming events.”

Marshall works with pretty limited space when it comes to activities, so they have to be creative in when, where and how they plan their events as well. “We don’t have access to a venue that holds over a thousand on campus. We generally have to go to local off-campus sites to host our larger events, which is probably the main reason that we did a few things differently last year.”

With another innovative, inventive and shrewd method of entertaining their students, the programming board gained another partner in a local business. “We got together with a local bowling alley to give our students free bowling in the month of September. We used to have an alley on campus, but it was shut down a couple of years ago. So, for one month, students knew they could go bowl for free every Thursday and it turned out to be our most attended event of the year. Our students really liked that, so, because we don’t have a movie theatre available on campus, in the month of October, we partnered with a local movie theater so that every Tuesday our students got free movies.”

Smart money is what you see at Marshall and its because of bright and dedicated students and staff. With creative ways of taking charge of their own entertainment and sharing the load with outside organizations, the Marshall University Campus Activities Programming Board is bringing students a colorful and exciting array of activities again and again.

For more information on the activities at MU, contact Andy Hermansdorfer at (304) 696-2283.