Dan Gomez: Leveling the playing field with flyers

When I was a freshman in the Quad, I got about three flyers a day shoved under my door. They advertised all sorts of things -- parties, group meetings, parties, speakers and anything else that campus groups wanted to let the student body know about (did I mention parties?). And even though I would ignore almost all of them, I still found it an incredibly valuable way to learn about what was going on around campus.

Little did I know that shoving flyers under doors, what campus groups refer to as "dorm storming," is technically prohibited by some college houses. Before this year, these rules were hardly ever enforced.

This year, however, in a move to break the evil machinations of student groups, some house deans have begun to crack down, threatening a $1 fine for every flyer distributed. The result is clear to every on-campus resident: no more flyers.

Without dorm storming, it has become much more difficult to advertise events. Sure, you have the kiosks. But most people don't look at kiosks all that frequently. Furthermore, any poster that is put up is guaranteed to be postered over within a matter of hours.

Because people only spend an average of 10 seconds looking at kiosks all day, the flashy posters get the attention. That's fine if you are a group with plenty of money to spend or a spring break brochure with scantily clad women on the cover, but the vast majority of groups that don't have money have a lot more trouble attracting people. For example, SPEC can spend a small fortune printing glossy, colorful posters, which would be out of the question for other, smaller groups.

But dorm storming made things a lot more equal in this sense. People tend to look at flyers slipped under their door a lot more closely than anonymous posters on random kiosks. It takes a lot more manpower to dorm storm than it does to staple posters. Dorm storming shifted the emphasis away from the money that a group had and toward the dedication of the group and student interest in the event.

Kiosks also don't discriminate between campus and outside groups. Outside groups can and do post on kiosks, often postering over campus events that haven't happened yet. I have no problem with this, but that further distracts from campus groups that are trying to promote their events. Because PennCards are needed to enter dorms, dorm storming is an advertisement outlet that is limited to on-campus groups.

Why do house deans insist on enforcing these rules, and why all of a sudden? I have come across a number of answers, none of which make too much sense.

Number one: flyers are annoying. This is certainly true. People aren't going to be interested in the vast majority of flyers that are slipped under doors. But just because a few people complain doesn't mean that the entire system ought to be scrapped. After all, this isn't particularly intrusive advertising -- if you don't want to pay attention to them, you can just put the flyers in the trash.

Number two: flyers create trash in the hallways. I certainly don't want to be creating more work for the housing staff (it already takes them three weeks to respond to basic repair calls), but most of this trash could be avoided if dorm stormers made sure to slide the flyers completely under the doors. Sure, a few people may decide to throw the flyers out into the hallway, but once again, the irresponsible behavior of a few people is no reason to deprive the rest of the Penn community of the benefits of dorm storming.

In the end, the ban on dorm storming won't hurt the big, well-funded groups, but it certainly will hurt the vast majority of smaller groups. What is much more infuriating is that there is no clear rationale behind the ban, just more pointless regulation. And even though the campus groups are the ones that are threatened with the fines, it is the students that will suffer.

Well, I guess we can all take comfort in the fact that everything else is running so smoothly in college housing that they can focus their attention on hijacking the ability of student groups to advertise. After all, it isn't like lights are exploding in the high rises or anything. Oh, wait...

But seriously, don't the house deans have anything better to do? One of the main jobs of the house deans is to create a greater sense of community. But how exactly does taking aim at student groups improve the students' sense of community?

The fact of the matter is that if house deans are interested in the welfare of the student body, they will lift the ban on dorm storming.

Dan Gomez is a junior History major from Wayne, Pa. and chairman of the Penn College Republicans.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.