Duke Student Government has developed an AOL instant messenger screen name that is designed especially to keep students in the know about upcoming parties, concerts, shows and other events. Organizers expect the program to gain immediate popularity because most students already use AIM regularly.
Late into the night, dorm halls across campus echo with the chimes of ongoing conversations on AOL Instant Messenger. Even when there’s nobody online, users are obsessively checking the yellow away messages. Imagine if instead of getting the generic “I am away from my computer,” students could click their way to an open invitation, finding an away message that reads “Chi Omega party at Vin Rouge Thursday, Maxwell party Saturday.”
Duke Student Government has already made this a reality. Pasha Majdi, DSG president, and Ajay Kori, director of student services for DSG, developed a new AIM screen name over the summer that is designed especially for Duke students. DevilDaily, the newest addition to buddy lists across campus, has away messages updated daily with information about what’s happening on and off campus.
Student groups can e-mail information about parties, concerts, shows or other events to be posted under DevilDaily’s info button.
Organizers expect the program to gain immediate popularity because most students already use AIM regularly. “It’s kind of a Duke thing to compulsively check away messages so we thought we’d just create a Duke screen name,” said Kori, a junior.
Since Duke currently lacks an easily accessible student calendar, DevilDaily’s updates will provide a convenient way of getting up-to-date news regarding student activities. “I think this is gonna be fantastic,” said Majdi, a senior. “There is no way of being informed right now besides word of mouth.”
Many freshmen, who find out about upcoming events through their equally uninformed friends or through flyers posted on West Campus, were enthusiastic about the possibility of now having a list of activities right at their fingertips. “It’s such a brilliant idea,” freshman Amin Makhani said. “I was just asking people right now where the party is tonight.”
Other freshmen said it would help them get information about parties faster instead of waiting for it to trickle through the grapevine. “It’s always a mad frenzy trying to see what’s going on. If it’s centralized you could get a better idea,” freshman Adam Cohen said. Others also expect benefits from having reliable news from upperclassmen and leaders of organizations.
But many upperclassmen claimed to already know the ropes and not to need a concentrated source of information. They said they will become aware of DevilDaily’s announcements in the usual ways and the posts will most likely not have any influence over their weekend decisions.
They did, however, laud the service as convenient for East Campus residents. “Freshmen are always looking for something to do,” junior Johannah Sanchez-Adams said.
Several students expressed concern that reactions to the publicized events might be overwhelming, especially if the events are few in number. “From a logistical standpoint, if there’s only one thing going on, does it really want to be so well advertised?” sophomore Ross Katz said. He speculated that there will be many organizations that would not want to take advantage of DevilDaily’s publicity for fear of mass overcrowding and breaking up of parties.
However, Kori assured that private or off-campus parties that do not want mass announcements will not find their names listed with the others. “We will only put up things that presidents or social chairs say we can,” he said.
Soon the program will have more automated “bot” functions similar to AIM’s Smarterchild, and DevilDaily will be able to send e-mail, provide users with automatic messaging options, hold customized conversations with the user and give weather and movie time information.
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