Okland University Student Congress is offering marketing and advertising help to student organizations through its new initiative, connectOU, which hopes to increase student involvement on campus.

Amera Fattah, OUSC student services director, said students are now able to go through OUSC to help market their events.

Fattah said connectOU is an email that comes directly to students. It is simplified with picture icons and short descriptions next to them. These icons and descriptions link students to their desired organizations.

“We have about 800 subscribers right now and we got the subscribers through orientation and  OUSC tables set up in the Oakland Center,” Fattah said.

The program is also accessible through OUSC’s website at www.oakland.edu/OUSC.

Ashima Vohra, president of the Indian Students Association of OU, said she received the connectOU email and forwarded it to  group members.

She said she does believe new students will utilize connectOU more, but it will probably take some time to catch on.

“There are so many things available to students. The Oakland calendar, GrizzOrgs, Facebook events, but if you aren’t invited to those events, you won’t see them,” Fattah said.

She said the issue with connectOU is students will have to subscribe to it.

“We are relying on word of mouth of the subscribers,” Fattah said.

She said students should talk to people and network in order for them to increase their on-campus involvement.

“My job here is to service the students and I wouldn’t feel like I was servicing them if I wasn’t connecting them to information that could benefit them. That’s what I hope to do with connectOU,” Fattah said.

Contact Multimedia Reporter Misha Mayhand via email at [email protected]