As a first-year Miami University student, I was constantly told to get involved, and that the best place to do that was The Hub. The website is supposed to be an easy way for students to learn about student organizations they might be interested in without attending meetings. However, from a student’s perspective, The Hub is very unorganized and confusing.
First and foremost, it is almost impossible to find clubs or organizations on The Hub without knowing the exact name of the organization. When searching keywords, the results rarely include any of the actual clubs or organizations that should follow the search. For example, when I search for book clubs, the first results are from the International Community and religious organizations. These organizations and posts barely have any connection to the search terms I provided.
This could also be a result of the fact that not all of Miami’s organizations are consistently updated on The Hub. For example, one of my organizations still has last year's executive team posted. How are new members supposed to join the organization without access to the proper contact information?
At Miami, the best way to truly get a sense of any of the student organizations is to attend Mega Fair. At this event, student organizations always have QR codes leading to their Hub page and GroupMe (if they have one), as well as a way to join their email list. This past Mega Fair, I realized that most students prefer to join GroupMe chats and email lists instead of joining the organization on The Hub.
This year, I am now a part of the leadership for the Table Tennis club I joined last year. I have been on The Hub website more this month than I have my entire time at Miami. As a member of the executive team, I still find it very difficult to understand The Hub. I thought that being a part of leadership would help the website make more organizational sense, but I had no such luck. It is still complete and utter chaos.
The others on my organization's leadership team have worked with this website before. Yet, it still took all of us working together for two hours to teach ourselves how to reorganize our organization’s profile on The Hub.
In order for first years at Miami to have a more seamless transition to college life, The Hub needs to be reorganized. The website needs a better browsing experience that is automatically listed in the way the clubs are sorted during the Mega Fair.
Miami is proud when it comes to our student-led organizations; The Hub should be a way to express that pride.
Jamie Gowans is a sophomore in the Farmer School of Business. She is a marketing major with a history minor. She has been a writer for The Miami Student since her first year.
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