The Bottom Rung

So it’s your first day at university. You have to contend with your parents pestering you with questions and the throngs of other mystified first years trying to get to their affairs in order. It’s a confusing a half day to say the least… Class schedules, room assignments, a new roommate, unpacking, frosh week activities, boisterous frosh leaders, public washrooms, a new computer and all that goes along with it, groceries, hooking up and stocking the beer fridge…. the list goes on. After you said goodbye to your parents for the third time and have unpacked some of your essentials, you finally have time to sit down and sort out your frosh week supplies.

At Dalhousie, and I’m sure at many other universities and colleges as well, you are given a big bag filled with schedules, Frisbees, t-shirts, water bottles and lots of advertising. And by a lot I mean it has the most advertising per square foot of any available media around (other than here). There are ads for condoms on stickers, condoms with ads on them, ads for Internet service on hats and ads for every other possible service a student could need on a stack of flyers. At my Dal, someone was smart enough to pop an elastic band around all the flyers for easy disposal. Not good for the poor Quik-E-Mart guy at the corner who paid to have that in there but given everything else that happened that day, it’s a life saver.

From Now Magazine (2005):

Frosh packages handed out by the student unions of Toronto’s three universities could all use a little less corporate junk and a few more goodies pumping conscious consumerism. But which university’s grab bag for impressionable first-year students is the most socially responsible? Here’s the trouble we found when we took a peek inside.

York University (Atkinson College)

The good

Not much, save for the Atkinson Handbook, printed on 100 per cent recycled paper with vegetable-based inks and fully union and volunteer made.

The bad

Lots of unrecyclable plastic stuff.

Major corporate presence: cologne from Lacoste and Axe, Ikea gift card, Fabutan sunscreen, Wrigley’s Excel gum.

Insane $120 price tag.

Not much pushing political and other campus causes.

All the companies the university uses are supposed to “properly remunerate employees,” but the towel and insulated lunch bag were made in China, where unions are illegal and wages are rock bottom.

Several made-in-Mexico polyester T-shirts, including a Hawaiian-themed number that looks like it will bleed dyes for several washings.

The skinny

Mostly a big loot bag. Atkinson tried to stay responsible - the college actually removed some corporate stuff added to the pack by York - but probably didn’t want to look cheap. After all, colleges do their own sponsorship fundraising and want to outshine the competition with impressive “gifts” like the cheap transitor masquerading as an MP3 player included in this kit.

The quotable

“We took out things that competed with services provided by student-run organizations.”

Michelle Steele, executive director, Atkinson Students Association

University of Toronto

The good

Most of the corporate goodies (or is that baddies?) that filled frosh kits in years past were jettisoned.

The $4.50 price tag.

The bad

The Nalgene water bottle. The jury’s still out on whether Lexan polycarbonate resin, which has been linked to developmental abnormalities, poses a health hazard.

Nalge Nunc International, the company that makes the bottles, is the target of a boycott because of its manufacture of restraining devices used in animal research.

The skinny

U of T’s student council is trying to clean up its frosh act but could have upped its eco and social responsibility rating by opting for a Canada-made hemp bag instead of the India-made cotton number and by tossing the made-in-China flashlight. The made-in-Mexico T-shirt is also worrisome (the student union admits to not being able to source them), given what the Maquila Solidarty Network has uncovered about sweatshops in Mexico.

The quotable

“We did want to make it corporate-free, but we also understand that we need some corporate sponsorship to make a frosh kit. One thing we’re trying to do for next year is avoid credit card advertising from MBNA.”

Samson Romero, vice-president, campus life, U of T Students Administrative Council

Ryerson University

The good

Rogers Media sponsored the kit but didn’t put its name anywhere on it.

The cotton laundry bag is made in Canada. It’s free.

The bad

While there’s not much in the way of corporate-sponsored trinkets, Fido, Apple and Travel Cuts make their presence felt with coupons offering savings and special deals on larger purchases.

The student union says none of the kit was made in sweatshops, but it’s worth noting that the whiteboard and pen are made in China - again, probably by exploited workers.

The skinny

No fancy distractions like Hawaiian shirts to distract attention from info materials on how to get active on campus and in the community and get more out of Ryerson’s Student Union.

The quotable

“We had to cut our budget, so we were forced to have the frosh kit we had. We actually missed deadlines because of the diligent research being done on the manufacturing and cost of our kits.”

I ended up using three things from my original frosh pack. My purple frosh shirt (because I had to), a Dalhousie frisbee and a Dalhousie Nalgene. Everything else got trashed, most without even looking at it. That is an unfortunate reality for most advertisers in the college arena whether they know it or not.

How does one break through? I can’t say. But I can tell you what pitches actually stuck during the first month at school.

Every single student at Dalhousie knows Casino taxi, now the biggest cab company in Halifax. If you ask one of the RAs (Residence Assistant) or the staff at the front desk of the residences around campus, they will most likely tell you to call Casino. Many don’t even know why, it’s just the only one they know.

Say you want to order a pizza, as I did 7 times in my first week, and you’re a new student who does not know the area. Who do you call? Well, you ask the only person you know who knows more about the city you are in than you do. Most likely the RA on your floor (see where I’m going here?). They will probably tell you PizzaTown if you go to Dalhousie. In the last couple of years they have bribed the Dalhousie staff to say PizzaTown and it is working for them. My roommate works at the front desk of one of the residences on campus and he gets 15% every pizza he orders (and only 10% from Extreme Pizza) and a free pizza every once and a while. Not a bad deal for me either
Besides bribing the RAs and residence staff with free beer and whatever you are trying to sell, there are other ways to get on campus and be heard. Try putting up a booth in the Student Union building on your campus. In the first month of school, that building will have the highest traffic numbers of any place on campus. You may not get many people to chat, but you will get a lot of eyeballs that have parents who want them to be safe and comfortable at university.

If you are in a telecom, lock up the university with a contract to supply all their students with long distance plans and TV service in their rooms. When I moved out of res and needed to hook up the Internet, I knocked on Aliant’s door first because they were the ones I had to buy long distance from in my room.

Postering campus (placing posters on all of the telephone poles) continues to be an effective way to get a hold of people. It may be hard to break through the clutter but effective ads will be seen and may even stop the person in their tracks. Billy Talent is playing at a club downtown and the word has been spreading primarily through the posters around town. It’s cheap and it still works.

Final thoughts: University students see more in their first few weeks of school then at any other time in their university career. I suggest you either skip the rush or make your communication so engaging (and more importantly, useful) that the students who come in contact with it can’t help but get sucked in. Otherwise you are no better than the poor Quik-E-Mart guy on the corner.