Elizabeth Song | Buried in a sea of paper

They're taking over campus. You've probably spotted them around. Stuffed in back pockets or tacked to bulletin boards. Full sheet or quarter page. Glossy or matte.

Whether you love making flyers or love tearing them to shreds, you can't deny we're buried in them. Waist-deep.

I've harped about the environmental cost of flyer saturation before. Now, I'd like to look beyond going green and consider the practical reasons to phase out these paper nuisances.

Today, national newspapers and spammers alike have gone digital; taking their messages to a broader audience while reducing publication costs. (Kudos to you if you're reading this column online).

Yet on campus, paper still reigns supreme. You could chalk this up to the fact that Penn still lacks a common, widely-used way to publicize campus events. Facebook, PennPortal and Google Calendar are all vying to synchronize our itineraries.

Or maybe we just like the buzz of Locust Walk. It's where students engage face-to-face, scope out the options for Friday night and drink in the vibrancy of campus life.

For student performing arts groups, the Walk is the main venue for ticket sales. According to College sophomore and co-chair of Penn Dance, Kimmie Behrman, the group can hand out as many as 300 to 400 flyers in one day.

Yet what I love most about Locust Walk are the people who embody the sights, sounds and rhythms of campus. The salsa dancers advertising the next Onda Latina show, the break dancers with their boom boxes around the Compass or the zany messages that some flyer-pushers will shout out to passerby.

I even enjoy the antics of the singing LaRouche guy. Or the "Jesus saves" man who soapboxes near College Green. At its pinnacle, the Walk can be a testament to free and creative expression; at its worst, it can be a flyering blitz.

You know the drill by now: walk briskly, wave hello to friends, avoid tripping and - above all - avoid eye contact with the flyer-pushers. Still, each time I make eye contact and refuse a leaflet, I feel as if I'm kicking a puppy.

And the politics of flyering are equally uncomfortable for the person on the other end. I mean, who relishes standing out in the cold and getting ignored? Or worse, having their flyers crumpled up and tossed into the next garbage bin? If you don't believe campus is a hostile place, just try flyering on a blustery January morning.

That's hardly surprising considering that stuffing a flyer into someone's hand hardly counts as communication. While cheap - Campus Copy charges $13.50 for 500 quarter-page leaflets - flyers are best left to bulletin boards. Like with junk mail, it's easy to be drowned out and ignored.

It's not that I don't care about childhood diabetes (or the next Penn Masala show), but a quick message as I'm rushing to class really isn't enough to motivate me. Your appeal for my pocket change, my time or my passion is being drowned out by a million others.

Think outside the box: scribble messages with chalk, invest in a vinyl banner, get a loudspeaker, hold meetings outside on College Green or bribe people with hot chocolate. Get creative and hand out cookies with event information in icing.

Or participate in more events like this past weekend's Spring Activities Fair.

"You have a chance to learn more from the groups than you would have haphazardly grabbing flyers like you would do on the Walk," said Student Activities Committee chair Eric Van Nostrand, a Wharton and Engineering junior.

In the end, it seems that flyers are harmful if they preclude real conversation, but acceptable if they act as conversation aids once you've shown interest. Let people shout messages and wave their arms in front of those big, cheesy display banners. Chances are, if we're interested, we'll step up.

So let's start a paperless revolution. And let's begin with Locust Walk.

Elizabeth Song is a College junior from Clemmons, NC. Her e-mail is song@dailypennsylvanian.com. Striking a Chord appears Tuesdays.

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