One of the common critiques I’ve heard of UFV is that there’s not enough of a campus culture, and while there are certainly people and groups doing their best to change that, the fact remains that lots of students come to school, go to their classes, and go home without doing anything else. Events are great, but no day or time works with everyone’s schedule. So how do we get every student engaged without getting them all together?
Easy: we copy Hogwarts.
We may not be able to have moving staircases, and our owls may look more like Canada geese, but we could easily sort every student into a “house” with a funny name and some arbitrary characteristics they can identify with. Faculty and staff will gain the ability to award or take away points, leading to utterly pointless rivalries and division among students, but at least they’ll care. And then maybe throw in a nice juicy scholarship that only members of the winning house for the year can apply for, and you’ve got a recipe for student engagement. Easy. Just like magic.
Jeff was The Cascade's Editor in Chief for the latter half of 2022, having previously served as Digital Media Manager, Culture & Events Editor, and Opinion Editor. One time he held all three of those positions for a month, and he's not sure how he survived that. He started at The Cascade in 2016.
