Building a better community, maybe

I lived in University housing for two years. First I was a resident, then I was a resident assistant. I had no idea until I became an RA that one of the points of student housing is to build a sort of community. I guess I realized during RA training that my RAs from the year before had made some efforts to bring the floor, and maybe even the whole dorm, together in some way. But living in a dorm of 900 people, I felt disconnected from pretty much everyone besides my 15 friends from the fourth floor.

So let's get to the point. What if KU took the current website for the Department of Student Housing and turned it into a news site for all the residence halls? I feel like a website that involved news of what's going on in the dorms, either official or unofficial news, would help residents feel more connected. It could also include features about different residents or RAs and message boards for residents to talk about their lives in housing. Much like a local newspaper helps a community to feel connected, so would a news website for residence halls.

I think the best way for a website like this to work is to have the housing directors, complex directors, RAs and residents all contribute to the site. I am sure that they could easily get advertisers for the site from local businesses, and that way they could make extra money to use to spruce up the site and make it more appealing.

I am fairly confident residents would start checking the website frequently. College students, especially freshman, love the internet, and they love seeing people they know on the internet. Just look at the phenomenon of The Facebook. College students can obsess over the internet; so, it seems like, these days, the internet may be the only way to bring them together. Well, that and alcohol, I guess.