Plans for Hopkins Identity Initiative discussed by SGA

This Tuesday, the Student Government Association (SGA) held their first meeting of the semester. At the meeting Glenn Bieler, Hopkins’s vice president for communications and public affairs, talked to SGA members about the Johns Hopkins University Identity Initiative. Student organizations Hopkins Kicks Butts and the Filmmaking Club also presented new initiatives.

“The goal of the Johns Hopkins University Identity Initiative is to bring consistency across the university through a marketing and communications focus,” Bieler said.

There are nine schools, both graduate and undergraduate, within the University, and many of the schools have their own logo with different fonts, colors, and icons.

The goal of the Identity Initiative is to create one university-wide logo, which will probably be launched in April, and will help centralize the university.

Every Hopkins school will default to the new logo.

“However, if a school has an old icon, they are allowed to keep it, but they have to fit it into the architecture of the new logo,” Bieler said.

When conducting interviews, one source told Bieler, “The Hopkins brand is powerful for medicine and lacrosse.”

The Identity Initiative will strive to demonstrate and market Hopkins’ other strengths, such as international relations and public health. The aim is to connect all of Hopkins’ schools in order to make it feel like one cohesive university.

In general, the SGA members are very supportive of the Identity Initiative.

“I really like the logo, it’s a good idea,” Executive Secretary Paige Doyle said.

Two student groups, Hopkins Kicks Butts and the Filmmaking club, also talked to the SGA at this week’s meeting.

Co-President of the Hopkins Kicks Butts organization, Zoe Rammelkamp discussed her club’s goal of making Hopkins a smoke-free campus.

Having a smoke-free campus would entail prohibiting smoking on all of Hopkins’ campuses, in addition to prohibiting the sale and promotion of all tobacco products on campus.

Rammelkamp supported the club’s initiative with statistics, stating that, “studies have shown that 69% of people who smoke do want to quit, but find that it is too difficult.”

Banning smoking on campus may aid some students in quitting, and the policy would increase the support network for smokers who want to quit by working with the Student Health and Wellness Center. Additionally, in a poll conducted of Hopkins undergraduates, only 9% self-identified as a smoker.

Many schools in Maryland, such as Towson and the University of Maryland have already decided to go smoke free.

“At this rate, Hopkins will become the last school in the state of Maryland to become smoke-free,” Rammelkamp said.

The Filmmaking Club president Maxwell Dickey also spoke to the group about his

club’s new project to create a weekly, two minute video-series.

“The transparency videos will focus on the SGA and student events and activities. The videos will be published on the film club’s youtube channel,” Dickey said.

After the meeting, Executive President Moses Song spoke about his plans for the upcoming semester.

“My goal would be to increase community service involvement on campus. President Daniel’s number one goal is also to increase community involvement,” said Song.

One way he hopes to do this is through a spring day of service, which would be a smaller day of service similar to that of the President’s Day of Service in the fall.