Might not be the best idea, and maybe there isn’t enough demand. Probably not going to get much support for a football event on a basketball forum lol.
But I’m sorry, Mason needs to be willing to try different things. Some ideas will stick and some will fail. You’re not going to build a stronger campus culture by waiting until you know an event will be successful before trying it.
The bigger issue is the lack of school pride and connection to the university. That affects everything from attendance at games and events to how engaged alumni are after they graduate—which I’m sure doesn’t help when it comes to things like alumni giving and the endowment.
I’d rather see Mason experiment with ways to build community and school pride than accept the status quo.
If you want to increase school pride you don’t do it by bussing people to a completely unrelated event.
Some ideas from other schools: ASU does “inferno” before the first day of classes (big fire show and concert at the football stadium for move in week). The freshmen seem to love it.
GCU turns every home basketball pregame into a massive party before the game with DJs, free food and drinks (non-alcoholic). It’s almost like our homecoming but every single game.
Making it much harder to get into the school works for the Ivies, and the public ivies (W&M, UVA, Stanford, Berkeley, Chicago et al). This is something the administration is ideologically opposed to.
I think having a fall homecoming like game for men’s soccer might be a good idea too (could tie it into the first week of classes too). Didn’t they do something like this this year? I don’t live in the area so don’t know everything that’s happening. But anyway, a good tailgating like party to kick off the fall semester and a soccer game wouldn’t be bad.
Bring back the old Mason Week in the spring. It went from Mason Week to Mason Day to basically nothing didn’t it?
Does freshman comp do a common read? They didn’t when I was there. It can be a pretty big event, especially if Mason can snag authors students would want to see.
Oh, and be slightly more hands off Mason Police. I hear you on safety but we don’t need a gestapo on campus. Ditto, gameday staff at EBA. Make the gameday atmosphere for students not for families with kids. It’s OK if they hear the occasional “suck on this” guys. I promise they’ll be fine.
Have to find a way to end the dead campus after Thursdays too. We need more students sticking around on the weekends doing stuff because there’s stuff to do.
Everything else is up to students to discover. So much free culture to be had on campus (free movies, free concerts, free theater tickets).
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