Collegiate Times

Almost 200 of you came by to chat up the Collegiate Times staff last week at our meet and greet near Newman Library.

It was a gratifying event, to say the least. From the students who only wanted free stuff to those visitors who actually do read the paper every day that it’s published — even if it’s just to do the Sudoku — I really do appreciate you coming by.

Just in case you were dying to know, according to you guys, our most read sections on a daily basis are news and sports, in that order. Features and opinions fell somewhere behind that.

A lot of people tend to love our Sudoku, and we will be adding more puzzles to the paper soon. And, to my delight, nearly a quarter of you filled out the option stating you would like to work for our newspaper, via writing, design, Web or photography. Our staff likely just expanded thanks to you.

Not only did these people say they wanted to work for our paper, they also walked away with a free gift. For this meet and greet, people who filled out a survey and provided constructive feedback received a swag ticket.

Swag is basically a bunch of free stuff we are given, such as movies, books, T-shirts and things like that. People send us these things so we’ll review them, and they can get some exposure. Sometimes, we do so, but the staff cannot keep any of those things — that would be unethical.

Therefore, we held this event as a way to empty our swag cabinet. Students brought their tickets up to the newsroom in Squires Student Center all week to claim their free piece of something. We still have plenty of hundred CDs, movies and books waiting to be claimed, so keep an eye out for the next meet and greet.

As far as other statistics we gathered, the most popular crowd that reads our paper are on-campus students, most of those being freshmen. Respondents were pretty evenly divided between how they access the Collegiate Times, but print narrowly edged out our website.

Do you have any other input that you’d like to give the CT? Are you interested in giving us other ideas, but you don’t actually want to work for us? Have you worked for us in the past and have something to say? If any of those descriptions fit you, feel free to shoot me an answer, publiceditor@collegiatetimes.com.

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m addicted to e-mail, and you’ll usually get a response pretty quickly.

Our next meet and greet event will be held on Tuesday, Oct. 19, inside Squires Student Center, at information booth A — the one nearest the ABP kiosk. It will be from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., so be sure to stop by, fill out a survey, maybe give a news tip and definitely get some free stuff.

But until then, or until next time, thank you for reading our paper, thank you for giving your input and thank you for your future contributions.

A version of this article appeared in the Oct 13 issue of the Collegiate Times.