The Buzz became a little less buzz-worthy this year, and student organizations are hurting because of it.Before this semester, student clubs could advertise their events in the Buzz, and easily get the word out about one of the awesome happenings that make this campus go round. But this year, with lost and found items, for sale items, and events forbidden from the Buzz, student organizations have had to rethink their advertising strategies as they face smaller turnouts to events.

The changes to the Buzz are huge. Now the only consistent advertising that clubs have access to without dipping into their budget or covering the campus with chalk is the student organization fair at the beginning of the year and whatever publicity they can gain from The Guilfordian. Both of these methods are not nearly as good as the Buzz.

The club fair happens annually, and most people sign up for a club and then ignore its e-mails for months. I know this because of my role as an officer with the video game club for two years. Plenty of people sign up for the club, but only about a third of them show up for events. I also know e-mails get ignored because, well, I did it too my first year.

The Guilfordian covering an event, on the other hand, is good publicity. However, it is very chancy that an event will be chosen for a story, and even if it does happen, the story will not go out until after the event. This leaves clubs without a reliable form of advertising.

Furthermore, the lack of event advertising in the Buzz compounds a bigger problem for student organizations – a lot of students do not know they exist. I have had many conversations with people who did not know that the club I help run is even a part of Guilford. I am sure that I am not the only officer of a club that this has happened to. Allowing clubs to advertise in the Buzz gives them free and useful publicity so that this problem will occur less often.

Of course, there is solid reasoning behind the changes to the Buzz. It would be impossible for me to argue that the Buzz is anywhere near as cluttered as it was last year. The addition of the forums and calendar has made the Buzz much more readable.

But I never look at that calendar, and I bet most of you never do either.

Student organizations do so much for this campus and put in so much hard work just to have an event that will be fun for us. It is really awful that I do not look at the calendar, because I know I am missing out.

Of course, not all club events show up in the calendar. The calendar only shows things that have reservations, and there are a lot of events that do not require a reservation.

There needs to be a better advertising option for student organizations. I suggest allowing events to be submitted to the Buzz from club e-mails. This will ensure that the only events cluttering our daily list of announcements will remain minimal, but still give these organizations direct access to the community.

In the meantime, maybe we should start looking at that calendar. Knowing first-hand the work that gets put in to running a club, I think it would be a shame if fantastic events continue to be ignored because we are too lazy to click one more time when we check our e-mail.

At the very least, if you get e-mails from clubs, stop ignoring them, and start getting involved.