Investigative Journalism: Communication department sees a decline in student volunteers

                Aidan Kalimon is a practicum student in the communication department at Clarion University. When not in class, he can often be found working behind the scenes in WCUC’s production room. There, he has tasks like recording and editing liners and listening to new music for consideration in the collection.

                Often, he is found doing this alone. Perhaps another practicum student shows up to work, but much of his time is spent working solo.

                Kalimon has his work cut out for him. He must go through stacks of CDs with new content. With more volunteers, this task would be divvied up among other students.

                 “We get three or four discs in a day. It all stacks up over time,” said Kalimon, who concedes that it’s just more work for those who do volunteer.

                It’s not just the radio station feeling the strain. Across the communication department, hard working students put in extra effort to make up for the shortage of help.

                Students and faculty in the communication department are scratching their heads. The radio station isn’t the only place seemingly devoid of extra hands. The TV studio and student newspaper, The Clarion Call, are similarly wanting for extra hands. Volunteers for student organizations across the communication department are far lower than in previous years.

                Eagle Media television productions have been reduced to skeleton crews. When one of the three shows in this semester’s lineup go to the studio to shoot, half a dozen at best turn out to work as crew. Often people on camera are pulling double duty off camera too. The other two shows see even less crew.

                Freddie Saladin has been with The Clarion Call since his junior year. First as a writer, and now the Features editor. He too has noticed a decline in people stepping up to write for the newspaper. His section only has one journalist to cover the four or five stories each week. There is currently only one photographer for the whole paper.

                Dr. Naomi O’Neil has been the adviser for the Clarion Advertising Club for the past nine years. She has also noticed a substantial drop in participating students.  In normal years, Ad Club can have an average of ten to fifteen students. This year, they have five core volunteers.

                Four years ago, Ad Club ticket sales for the Pittsburgh Pirates totaled around 268. This year and last year were both 87. However, while output has dropped, those who have stayed committed have worked very hard.

                She believes that many of these students are simply over-committing themselves. They come in for their freshman year and see all these organizations they can be a part of. The result is that they end up spreading themselves too thin. Many students also have two or three jobs that they may be working that keeps them from committing fully.

                "It has always been a challenge to get students to commit to one club," Dr. O’Neil said, noting that students would show up to Ad Club meetings at the beginning of the semester, but then start falling off as the year progressed.

                “It just seems like students are taking on so many other responsibilities that it appears they are spread very thin as far as their time and ability to commit to something."

                Despite the decrease in activity in student organizations, overall enrollment in the communication department is on the rise. The 2017-2018 academic year saw a 175% increase in enrollment from just four years ago. The problem is not correlated with the number of incoming students.

                The lack of student volunteers in organizations has affected the work of those that are committed on a regular basis. Lyndsey Kujawa is a junior in the digital media program. For the spring semester, she created a show called ‘Filling the Space.’ It’s a show about art and the creative process.

                “When I was here as a freshman, we had over 20 people all the time coming down to help with news broadcasts, with sports remotes.” Kujawa said. When she started her show however, she noticed a decrease in student involvement. Most shoots had a total of six people working as crew in the studio.

                “It was a little disappointing to me. I thought since this was a new project, something brand new coming to the department, that students would be more enthusiastic about doing it.”

                Kujawa wasn’t the only person producing shows for Eagle Media in the spring. Spike Leonhart, also known as Spike the Comedian, has been working on two shows. He also noticed a lack of enthusiasm for production.

                “People just want to see the finished product, they're not interested in the work that goes into it.” Spike said. He observed that students mostly worked on productions if there was a class that required them to do it. Otherwise, there would be maybe two or three students committed to a project.
 

                “The rest are background noise.”

                Kalimon noticed a similar attitude with the radio station. "A lot of people want to be on air, but they don't want to do the busy-work,” he said. He thinks that morale would go up if more work were divided up among more people.

                Martin Mateer was originally a computer science major before switching to communication. He has been active in both television and radio production. He was surprised at the shortage of people stepping up to work on both. He says it’s a bigger problem in the television studio, where there are more technical positions to be filled compared to radio.

                He thinks part of the problem could be a lack of awareness that these organizations exist.

                “I didn’t even realize that students could get involved until this year,” Mateer said. He believes that if students were had more information on how they could get involved, there would be more volunteers.

                Saladin says there are not enough writers for the mount of stories that need to be covered each week. Often editors are taking up the role of reporter and writer on top of their editing tasks. He says taking on these extra tasks, as well as being an editor and having a full class load is a lot of strain. He has been disappointed with the response from the outreach to journalism students.

                “We would go to these classes and say, ‘how many of you are journalism majors,’ with a bunch of people raising their hands,” said Saladin. He would go on to explain what kind of work would be involved and how it would benefit them. The number of people interested dropped to only a couple after the pitch.

                “They should be coming to us and participating. It will be good and beneficial for them in their future.”

                Spike has been working as a kind of liaison between Eagle Media, theatre and English departments to get collaborations started. To him it seemed like a logical thing to do. The English department has writers to create stories and scripts. The theatre department has actors, set designers and costuming for performance. Eagle Media has the resources to shoot and edit the projects for viewing. He says his efforts have been discouraging. The Theatre and English departments seem to be on board, but there’s a lack of enthusiasm from students at Eagle Media.

                This was also tried previously, according to a professor who talked to Spike about the idea. Failure of the departments to communicate effectively led to it’s demise.

                Dr. O’Neil is taking steps to help Ad Club improve its numbers as well. They’re seeking to start recruitment now, rather than in the fall. This means students will already have it in mind when they return from summer break. The concern is that by the time students hear about the organization in the fall, they already have other commitments. An open house is also planned with food, games and prizes to grab student interest.

                Saladin said that even though student enthusiasm has been less than stellar in the past, they will continue to push for recruits. He feels that there hasn’t been enough exposure to The Call for students. A bulletin board for the newspaper is being planned for the upcoming academic year.

                Communication department chair, Dr. Myrna Kuehn isn’t as concerned about the drop in student participation.

                "When you look at student groups, when you look at volunteer groups, there is an ebb and flow to it," Dr. Kuehn said. A student gets involved with something they love, so they tell their friends. That group of friends also gets excited about the organization and get involved too. When they graduate it leaves a void behind which is not always filled immediately. This is also how non-majors get involved. Often these organizations attract people from different majors because they discover that it’s something they enjoy or have a talent for.

                “I'll look at it and I'll say, aw it's too bad we don't have as many in there this year as we did last year, but it doesn't worry me because there are just trends that happen that way."

                There are classes which involve applied learning through the television studio. the radio station, the newspaper, or through social media. These classes require students to plug in in specific ways, which feeds the participation. Then there are the students who participate on their own initiative, working for the fun of it or for professional development.

                “Internally driven or dedicated students are the ones who volunteer first,” says Dr. Kuehn. “Whether it's a school thing or a community thing or a work thing, most ardent volunteers do it because they find their own personal satisfaction in doing it."

                Mateer says the shortage of volunteers hasn’t had a negative effect on his enjoyment in producing content for television and radio.

                “It’s been a really positive experience,” Mateer said. Not only has he learned a lot but has made a lot of friends and good memories in his time with Eagle Media. He thinks that means as much as the hands-on experience. The interaction with fellow students can be as valuable as the technical skills gained.

                Perhaps with time, a new wave of self-motivated students will get interested in these organizations again. At the same time, maybe these new students will also inspire their friends to get involved too.

                “It's their future. Sooner or later we'll have to be competing for jobs,” Saladin said of journalism majors. “Those who are writing are going to have a lot more experience."

                For now, the dedicated few like Aidan Kalimon will continue to work hard to fill the void left by a dearth of volunteers. However, they can take come solace in knowing that their hard work will eventually pay off.