Endless amounts of paper and a lack of cohesion and leadership transition are all things that RattlerLink plans to solve for student organizations.
The new web application on http://rattlerlink.org allows students the convenience of doing several organizational tasks online.
Tasks such as registration, membership, management and document uploading are just some features that will be on the new site.
“It’s a Web site for centralizing student organization information so that all of the paperwork for club certification and student organization certification can be online,” said Aaron Severs, president of the Collegiate Link, the company that created the software. “This provides a way for everyone to be able to see what student organization and involvement opportunities are available.”
Other perks include RattlerLink’s ability to track each person’s activities, which can make it easy to go back and print out records for resumes.
Thinking back on the 160 organizations registered last year, Felecia Barnes, coordinator of student activities, said she is glad for the technological upgrade. “The old process was tedious,” Barnes said.
The former director of student activities initiated the concept of online processing because she felt there was too much paper involved.
Previously, students had to attend welcome back week and complete the certification checklist.
“It had to be checked off by hand with each organization,” Barnes said.
Barnes said she believes that RatterLink is user friendly and will help out with the leadership transition information.
“When someone graduates and leaves nothing behind, we can go back and get the information,” Barnes said. “Sometimes alumni build up the organization and take everything with them.”
At an introductory session of RattlerLink, Severs mentioned that it provides a master calendar for all student organization events registered.
Concluding the session, students were generally optimistic about the software.
“A lot of times students may miss Clubs and Organization Day and they are kind of at loss with what’s going on with organizations,” said Whitney Murray, 21, vice president of the FAMU Pre-law fraternity, Phi Alpha Delta.
Ricky Stevens, 22, president of Boyz of Poison, also attended the session but he’s skeptical about the likelihood of students utilizing RattlerLink.
“It will keep everything a lot more organized, but I don’t think that everyone is going to put their information on there for everyone to see,” said Stevens, a business administration student from Jacksonville. “A lot of times everyone’s events are secretive.”
Murray also had reservations.
“People should be a little cautious about what they put up, so that the world doesn’t see it,” said the political science student from Jacksonville.
Although Stevens thinks RattlerLink will make it a lot easier to organize events, if the organizations do not use it he does not believe it will make a difference.
“It’s a good thing, but if you’re already on Facebook why would you want to get on here to use this.”
On the other hand, Murray is happy to see a change.
“It’s new software and we’re excited, we’ll work with it and the company to tailor it to FAMU’s needs.
“I think it will do just what it’s called… link student organizations together as well as let students see a comprehensive view of what’s going on,” Murray said.
Emil Muhammad, 20, from Queens, NY said he has inquired about the new program for two of the organizations he is involved in. However they have not yet registered. But he is hopeful they will soon.
“It seems as if the equipment they are using is promising, but we just haven’t gotten around to registering yet,” said the engineering student. “It has been mentioned in our [Muslim Student Association] meetings though.”
According to the Office of Student Activities, all student organizations and clubs must register and update by Oct. 8.
Soon RattlerLink will feature the financial management of budgets, submission of financial requests, attendance tracking and event invitations.