An Essay on the University's Poster Policy

Extracurricular activities are a fundamental part of a student's education.

No respectable university would try to deny this fact. A good education is not merely composed of academics, but also of athletics, arts, and other pursuits. A university that merely encourages academic excellence, without having strong institutions of extra-curricular involvement, will ill-serve its students and will eventually stagnate. If the purpose of university courses is to teach students to teach themselves, then extra-curricular activities are where students practice these skills.

Excerpt from the University of Waterloo's Policy Two It is the general policy of the University to provide sufficient tackboards or other types of notice boards throughout its buildings, which will provide a reasonable amount of space for the posting of legitimate notices required for the official purposes of academic, non-academic, and student activities. All notices are to be on a tackboard, and any notices posted elsewhere, except [during election periods], will be removed. ...

Unfortunately, Waterloo's extracurricular life is less than healthy, and part of the blame for this can be placed squarely on Waterloo's aging Poster Policy. Now almost 15 years old, it stifles students' ability to publicize events and meetings and thereby makes it extremely difficult to organize extracurricular activities. According to the policy, all posters are required to be put up on the special tackboards, which dot the campus. The problem is that these tackboards are few in number and most of them are in hardly noticeable locations. Exacerbating this problem is the fact that these tackboards are all either designated as belonging to a specific on-campus organization or as a "public board" that anyone can put stuff onto. Organizations that own tackboards often impose harsh limitations on the use of their boards by only allowing a certain number of posters to be posted or not allowing any posters at all. And the public boards are always so crammed with outdated posters that people simply don't bother looking at them.

All this wouldn't be a problem if there were other ways to publicize events. In some faculties, such as engineering, most students share a common core set of classes, so club organizers can simply show up at these classes and talk to students directly. Unfortunately, students in other faculties are not so lucky. The only time they learn of events is when they happen to read a tackboard, Imprint, or Gazette, when they happen to pass by the SLC or other student area when a club has set up a booth of some sort, or when they hear rumours through friends. This is unacceptable. There should be a more reliable way of letting students know about events that they may be interested in.

And there is. Many clubs, co-op companies, and even some faculty groups blatantly flaunt the poster policy and plaster their posters over walls, doors, ceilings, and any other place where a student might look. And this technique works. Students see the posters, they see events that they're interested in or clubs that they want to join, and they get involved. In fact, the poster policy tacitly acknowledges the inadequacy of the tackboard system by waiving the tackboard rules during student election campaigns.

It's about time that Waterloo formulate a new Poster Policy, one which considers Waterloo's extracurricular health to be more important than conserving a few measly dollars by not painting the walls so often. This new poster policy should start by affirming the university's commitment to student extracurricular involvement and recognizing that posters are the only effective means of informing students about extracurricular events. It should take as its guiding principle the idea that to encourage involvement, posters should be allowed maximum visibility and that as such it should be impossible to

• Go to class without passing a poster
• Pass through an university building without seeing a poster
• Walk across campus without seeing a poster

• Large and predominant poster tackboards should be placed at all building entrances.
• Posters should be allowed on the walls of all stairwells. Management of the posters for these stairwells should belong to the respective student clubs or societies of that building (they can institute their own policies regarding who's responsible for removing outdated posters when and should ideally allow university-affiliated clubs to put up an unlimited number of posters)
• Tunnels and walkways between buildings should also have similar rules governing them.
• Posters should be allowed on the walls of "student" areas such as student lounges, cafeterias, certain hallways, etc.
• As before, public boards should be available for advertising from university-affiliated or outside clubs and organizations; however, all public boards should be unconditionally cleared once a week. Organizations interested in publicizing events for more than one week should be required to put up new posters each week.
• Those ridiculous round, outdoor kiosks should be replaced by large flat poster boards, which could even have useful campus maps on them for visitors. Perhaps a glass or plastic covering should be placed over the poster section so that only Fed approved posters can be placed on them.