Weeks of planning come to a head on a Tuesday afternoon in the SAC. The social chair for a student organization rearranges empty chairs and regrets leaving her last class early for this. One floor down, a hungry sophomore buys an overpriced lunch to kill time, unaware of the pizzas growing cold on the foldout table at the event upstairs. If only the sophomore knew.
HornsLink is a great resource for organizations seeking to publicize their events. The University requires all student organizations to register a page on HornsLink, which serves as the University’s official website for managing student organizations. However, most organizations underutilize HornsLink’s event planning capabilities. By publishing upcoming activities on the events tab, student organizations can reach a large audience and garner increased visibility for their activities.
Alec Weigel, president of Texas Ballroom, noted an increase in student turnout at the organization’s events since they started advertising on HornsLink.
“People were finding our events through HornsLink,” Weigel said. “We started thinking ‘Oh, we really need to make sure that we’re keeping up to date with posting events on here.’”
Although many clubs prefer to publicize events on their dedicated social media, this approach requires students to already be following the organization’s account or come across a repost to learn about the event. Conversely, organizations can utilize HornsLink’s large user base to advertise their events.
Since all students become familiar with HornsLink during Student Activities presentations at orientation, it already has an established, built-in audience for organizations.
“Content is just so accessible because it’s something students are made very clear that this is a resource they have access to over the course of orientation,” Weigel said.
Additionally, student organizations can benefit from HornsLink’s event planning features, such as their automatic QR code generator for attendance tracking.
Sade Dawson-Love, director of student activities, said that the department is actively committed to making the platform as meaningful as possible and is receptive to student feedback.
“We are trying our hardest to promote HornsLink a lot more because we think this is a feature that could really be utilized,” Dawson-Love said.
Despite its potential, the lack of event promotion on HornsLink has resulted in limited student engagement beyond searching for clubs during their first semester. This creates a pattern where organizations avoid posting on HornsLink due to perceived low visibility, while students avoid the platform due to the lack of content.
Student organizations can break this cycle and capitalize on HornsLink’s potential by actively posting events on the platform, making it the primary means for connecting students with campus events.
Chowdhury is an international relations major from Spring, TX.
