Where is the virtual campus union?

We remember fondly the "union break" when we were in college. We wrapped up against the Wisconsin and New Hampshire winters respectively and made our way to the union for companionship, coffee and conversation. The union has for many years been at the center of the campus community, a student-centered place to meet together, find out what is going on, get something to eat, go to a program, or participate in a student organization.

Contemporary unions provide art exhibits, student offices, recreational areas, conference rooms, an array of other features unique to every campus, and amenities such as bookstores, food courts, retail shops, banks, copy shops, etc. The role of the union, however, is relatively constant: It is the common space for the community to share and, by virtue of that, get to see and know one another in support of the educational mission of the college or university.

What is the impact of today's technology on the union? How does it affect the creation and delivery of programs and services? An even trickier question is can a virtual union exist? And if so, what would it look like and how would you get there?

The physical union must continuously update its programs, services, and facilities. In recent years, this has meant, among other things, responding to the tremendous advances in computer usage. This has taken the form of computer labs, email stations, network upgrades, wireless Internet systems, teleconferencing capabilities in meeting rooms, and on-line voting for student government elections, to name just a few innovations. In addition, dynamic web sites have become de rigueur for demonstrating that a particular union is technologically "au currant."

But in this regard, is the union the digital center of campus for students? Where is the place for students to go on-line and get student oriented on-line material and to interact with each other? If the Union is the heart of the student campus, where is the heart of the virtual student campus?

Student affairs web sites are filled with information supporting student life. Students can go on-line and learn how to form organizations, write resumes, fill out financial aid forms, and sign up for classes. They can also access their grade reports and financial aid data, and interact with their academic and extracurricular advisors.

Campus portals, entryways to the digital campus, are being increasingly designed to be the digital center of campus. However, compared to the commercial, advertising-driven competition of My Yahoo, My Netscape, MY MSN, the campus portal is frequently not the students web site of choice. Campus portals rarely appear designed as holistic qualitative environments similar to the physical union or the commercial sites for that matter. Rather, they reflect a beginning effort to centralize academic and student service functions somewhat similar to a student services building where operational transactions occur, but hardly social ones.

Do students want a virtual union? Do they need one? Perhaps, more tactically, does the institution need to create one? These are fair questions. One answer comes to us from the research on student Internet use from the Chronicle 2001-2 Freshman Survey (February 1, 2002), indicating that during the previous year nearly 70% of students frequently used e-mail, and nearly 20% frequently used chat rooms.

From the Pew Internet and American Life Project report "The Internet Goes to College: How students are living in the future with today's technology" (September 15, 2002), we learn that on a typical day, 26% of college students use some type of instant messenger. These data suggest that students are active Internet users, computers are already integrated into their lifestyles and communities, and they are already creating their own virtual campuses.

Public Affairs officers have recognized that the University website is a critical front to the institutional image as well as a crucial tool in disseminating information. These sites are increasingly including web cams that provide live shots of campus, video of current campus happenings, audio of events and speakers, as well as dynamic graphics. These sites are directed toward faculty, staff, alumni, and prospective students and are more akin to the commercial type home pages mentioned above.

The campus portals, meanwhile, are functioning as more of an internal mechanism to get information directly to students and, to some extent, between them and their advisors.

As the portals and university web sites, with all of their bells and whistles intended to sell the image of the institution, merge and generate a synthesized energy of image, information, and excitement about the place, both physically and virtually, we can begin to say that the digital union is being created.

Like the physical union, the virtual union will provide opportunities for interaction, culture, and entertainment as well as certain types of support services. It will look just like many of our best home pages, which have all of the above. In fact, the word to describe this will still work-the "union break" is just going home for a while to be with friends and see what is going on. This sounds a lot like checking email, playing a game, having a chat, or buying a school sweatshirt.