August 31, 2018

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OUTHERN S The Student Voice of Florida Southern College

SGA Pres addresses Mocs

Natalie Barton Open Letter

Dear Mocs, Honored doesn’t even begin to describe how humbled I am to serve as your Student Body President for the 2018-19 academic year. I do not take this position lightly, and it is with great honor that I will represent the student body. I hope that as all of you have moved back to Florida Southern, whether it’s your first year on campus or your fourth year, you have come to see this wonderful campus as home. And being that it is home, we all do care so deeply for this special place and want it to be the best that it can be. Student Government Association strives to do just that. We work to serve the students by voicing concerns and comments up to administration. With the same respect, we also voice information and questions down from administration to the student level. This partnership of bridging the student body with administration is no easy task,

and your representation in Student Government makes all the difference in our success. With that being said, I encourage each of you to take an active role in your campus and vote in our upcoming election from September 7th-10th to elect our student senate. Thirty-six senators represent all different areas from campus life, from commuters to business students to athletes. You have say in who represents you in SGA, so I highly encourage you to vote in this year’s election via Engage! As your president, know that I am always available to you and would love to hear any input you have. My office hours are on Wednesdays from 3 P.M. to 5 P.M. and Fridays from 8 A.M. to 10 A.M., so come chat with me on the 2nd floor of Rogers in the SGA Office! In closing, I know that it is easy for each of us to get lost in the frustrating aspects of college life, like finding parking or living on little sleep. I hope you all will see what a truly amazing place Florida Southern is.

We stand out in the areas of academic excellence, student involvement, and athletics, and it is through these four years that lifelong friendships and memories are made on such a close-knit campus. Although to many, this place may be seen simply as “Florida Southern College,” to us it is “Home,” and for that it will always be deeply special.

Photo courtesy of Reems Landreth / FSC Center for Student Involvement

EngageFSC replaces MOCsync Hannah Kiester News Editor

Over the summer, The Center for Student Involvement worked to replace MOCsync with a platform called Engage. The platform was designed to be easier for students to use than MOCsync, while still allowing them to keep track of their involvement on campus. In the past, students have said that MOCsync was confusing and difficult to use. This created a problem for students trying to track their campus involvement, as well as student leaders trying to manage their organizations. “For students and student leaders, a lot of the processes have become more streamlined, and the whole site has a much cleaner look and feel,” Director of Student Involvement Allison Manning said. Manning shared how Orgsync, what we referred to as Mocsync, underwent a merge with Campus Labs a few years ago. The merger combined the best features of Orgsync and its competitor, Collegiate Link, to create Engage. Engage allows students to more easily acomplish these tasks with its user-friendly interface. Overall, the change has received positive reactions from students.

“I find that Engage is easier to use than MOCsync because its home screen has a better layout and the tabs are much easier to follow,” senior Ben Sund said. Sund is an Residential Advisor, Vice President of the Harry Potter Club, and is a member of several other campus clubs and organizations. As a result, he has used MOCsync frequently to keep track of these organizations and now uses Engage. “Engage has a system of having a managing side and an explorer side. The managing is useful un managing the different clubs and organizations, and for me, community living documents necessary for my RA role,” Sund said. Upperclassmen at FSC have been waiting for the kind of change that Engage is bringing to how student organizations can run. “I think that Engage is a huge step in the right direction for the school,” FSC Senior and SGA Vice President of Academics Greg Imhoff said. “Engage is so much

easier to navigate than MOCsync, more user-friendly, and just overall better.” Despite the positive reception to Engage, students have been experiencing trouble logging on for the first time to explore their new campus involvement platform. “Students are supposed to be able to transfer their MOCsync info over, but the transfer isn’t going as smoothly as would’ve been preferred,” Imhoff said. If students find they cannot log in to Engage with their MOCsync login, they can find the help they need at Rinker Technology Center. There are also several resources that students can uses if they have questions about or trouble with Engage. The Center for Student Involvement is able to answer any questions and help with the transition to Engage. The number for their office is (863)-680-4499. In addition, students can contact Allison Manning, at her email: amanning@flsouthern.edu. All students should have also received an email with basic information on Engage as well as a link to an informational video.

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FRIDAY, August 31, 2018 VOL. 132, NO. 12

Blast Off, Meet the Greeks break records

Reems Landreth Staff Writer

Blast Off has been marked as the largest event in recent FSC history after 1,429 students swiped into Jenkins Field House on Aug. 21. According to SGA Executive Vice President Arjeet Tipirneni, around 95 clubs and organizations attended this year’s event. Tipirneni described himself as “over the moon” with the results. SGA President Natalie Barton said that it was “incredible” to see Jenkins Field House so busy and filled. “I think the exciting increase of attendance at this year’s blast of shows the new presence of SGA on campus,” Barton said. This was the first year that Interfraternity Council (IFC) and National Panhellenic Conference (NPC) affiliates were not invited to table at Blast Off; they were granted their own event on Aug. 24. According to IFC Vice President Bryce Gressani, members of greek life were skeptical about the event, “Meet the Greeks,” due to the lack of attendance at last semester’s event of the same name. Gressani said in a message that IFC tripled the amount of students signed up for recruitment. “Personally, I feel extremely confident that even though individual organizations will no longer be at Blast Off, greek life can still continue to be a huge presence on campus,” Gressani said. Panhellenic Vice President of Recruitment, Ava Zisman, said that over 500 students attended the event. She also said that enrollment is already higher than this time last year because of Meet the Greeks. “I think keeping Meet the Greeks and Blast Off separate will be beneficial to everyone because it allows other organizations to have more space at Blast Off and have more focus on them instead of all the greek organizations,” Zisman said. Fraternity Recruitment will take place from Sept. 17 to 20 with a kick-off event on Sept. 16. Fraternity bid day will be Sept. 22. Sorority recruitment will take place from Sept. 21 to 23 with a kick-off event on Sept. 20. Sorority bid day will be Sept. 24.

Continue to Page 2 for pictures

Graphic courtesy of Florida Southern College

Visit us at fscsouthern.com and follow us on Twitter @FSCsouthern!

In this issue:

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Page 4

Center

Page 6

Business department speaker opens lecture series

Sophomore goalkeeper spotlight

Southern welcomes new students to campus

Summer internships feature three students’ experiences


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August 31, 2018 by FSC Southern - Issuu