Proposal for Peddie Student Activities Website

By Liam Wall 14 The problem (as identified by the faculty student senate): While day students have the luxury of parents to take them where they and their friends would like to go, boarders are, apart from SNAs and infrequent visits from parents, stuck in Hightstown. This has created a major division between the social spheres of day and boarding students. International and out of state students are at an even greater disadvantage. The recent enforcement of car policy has only made this problem worse.

The philosophy: Instead of adding to faculty responsibilities with more SNAs or trips, lets work with what we have to create a more efficient system. Instead of announcing all of the trips from the top down, lets allow students to suggest at least some of the trips. The student activities office offers lots of trips. The number of trips isnt necessarily the problem. Its that unlike day students, boarders cannot go where they want to go when they want to go there.

The solution: We have created a website with three pages: a page where students can request transportation, a page where faculty can offer transportation and a social page where students can discuss activities and see what trips their classmates have signed up for. On the first page students can request transportation to nearby places by entering an activity and a place or address (example: shopping at Hamilton Marketplace). Blue pins will appear on a map to mark the destinations of requested trips. Other students can then like these suggestions. The student activities office can then schedule a SNA trip to the most popular suggestions. At this point the pins on the map will turn green and students will be able to sign up for trips directly on the site using their Peddie Google username. This feature gives students control over planning SNAs. While the first page featured a map of student suggested destinations, the second page will allow faculty to announce open seats in their cars for trips around Hightstown. If a teacher is planning to visit target or have dinner in Princeton in the afternoon, the teacher could announce that there are two free spots in his or her car online that morning. This site would allow three kinds of requests: SNA suggestions (self explanatory), public requests for transportation (suggestions to run a bus trip during the week, e.g. a trip to Dicks sporting goods) or private requests for transportation (request a ride to an individual or a small private group, e.g. to go to an SAT tutor or go out to dinner with a friend).