The Sheridan Libraries, together with the Johns Hopkins Information Technology department, recently unveiled a portal Web site, a central location where students can access information relating to Hopkins alongside regular Internet content. On this Web site, after logging in using a JHED login and password, students will find any special announcements, the weather and even the latest news updates.
One of the administration's primary areas of focus over the past several years has been improving communication between the administration and the students. Students often complain that they are unaware of events around campus or important deadlines, while administrators argue they send out all relevant information well ahead of time.
The problem arises due to a lack of centralization. As a student living in the dorms, you have a campus mailbox, your mailbox for your own room, your jhu.edu email address and possibly a different primary email address. Because of this decentralized mess, students are being inundated with information and have difficulty seeking out the truly important and necessary details.
The administration made an attempt to centralize the information exchange this year by starting the JHBroadcast system. However, this system does not have strong enough content filters and thus many of these emails are being sent out so often that students have become immune to them, again missing important information.
My colleagues on Student Council and I try to limit our information delivery to the weekly e-mails. We understand, however, that students do not necessarily read all Student Council emails and that even if they do, it will often be several days after the relevance of the information we sent out has expired.
This is why I believe the portal will be a huge success. While some of the more extravagant aspects of the portal are still under development, the fundamentals are already in place.
One of the most important is an announcements box. Every time you log in, you will be notified of any relevant official announcements, including class registration deadlines, snow days or other emergency notifications. This announcements box will be limited to only the most important announcements; therefore, students won't miss key information amid a sea of concert and lecture announcements.
To promote group events or speakers on campus, there will be another box announcing these events. Because this box will be fully customizable, students won't have to wade through event announcements that don't interest them. Students can select which types of events interest them, whether they are cultural, political or scientific. Only those events that fulfill your preset requirements will be displayed. This events box will serve as a much more effective means of communication than plethora of flyers around campus that students often do not read. The site will also offer news updates, which will be customizable. Students choose which news sources they prefer, and there will be updated headlines and stories.
Some people claim that Hopkins is an apathetic campus and that getting students to come to an event that doesn't serve free food is a nearly impossible task. I disagree.
Hopkins undergraduates are as involved and informed about the world around them as any other college students. We have nearly 300 organizations on campus offering interested students the opportunity to contribute their opinions and resources to make this campus a better place.
This portal as it exists today is already a tremendous resource for students and is certainly a laudable effort on the part of the administration to improve its relationship with undergraduates.
As it grows in the next few weeks and months, the portal will prove to be invaluable for students. It will hopefully develop into the only location students need to access any information, whether inside or outside the Hopkins domain.
--Atin Agarwal is a senior political science and economics major from Monte Sereno, CA. He is the president of Student Council. The Hopkins portal can be found at https://portal.johnshopkins.edu.
