Synergy helps students locate activities

New publication assists students in finding campus activities that interest them

By Sam Stavis
For the Daily

While opportunities may abound on a campus with more than 36,000 students, they can sometimes be difficult to find.

"There is more available for you to do here, but in a smaller college, things find you. Here, you have to go out and find them," said LSA first-year student Nate Walker.

Synergy, a new publication founded last year by alumnae Nellie Yeretsian, was created to help University students locate co-curricular activities that best suit their interests.

"With the U of M being so large," Yeretsian said, "I thought students needed some kind of resource for activities.

"I thought Festifall and Winterfest were great, but they only happened twice a year, and if you missed them, there was nothing else you could do."

Yeretsian said the publication was created to give "visibility to all the opportunities that await students - it's a reminder that it's not just one or two groups that give life to this campus."

Susan Wilson, director of the Office of Student Activities and Leadership, also oversaw the creation of the publication. "Synergy is an important vehicle for finding out what is available to you in the area of student involvement and student leadership development," Wilson said.

Essentially a listing of every student organization and activity at the University, Synergy took a full year to complete and was published by the Office of Student Activities and Leadership.

Hundreds of individual activities are listed, ranging from the Nihilist Party to the Descendants of the Monkey God, and each activity has a paragraph-long description.

"Students need to know what's available to them. They need to know first-hand what the groups are actually doing," Yeretsian said.

The activities are grouped into 12 categories, including recreational and athletic clubs, performing arts groups, religious groups and nearly everything in between.

"Synergy can do something for everyone," Yeretsian said.

While a guide like this may be particularly helpful for new students beginning to discover the University, more experienced students stand to gain much as well.

One complaint about Synergy is that it doesn't contain the phone numbers or addresses of the listed organizations.

"It's great that they have so many listings, but they should give us a clue about how to get in contact with the groups," said LSA first-year student Nora Coleman.

However, the Michigan Student Assembly and SAL offices are usually able to provide information about activities in question. There is also a listing of Internet addresses in the back of the Synergy booklet.

While students asked about the publication said they knew little about it, Yeretsian expressed hopes that Synergy will become a campus mainstay.

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