Pace kicks off every semester with the Club Fair, an event where clubs from the university set up tables to welcome and recruit new students. This event, as anyone who attended it would corroborate, is in desperate need of improvement. As a freshman, the whole experience was very overwhelming. My fellow first year student Ally Beck and I braved the sea of Pace students flooding 1 Pace Plaza on September 12th. Land was frustratingly difficult to get to. Every single table by some inscrutable stroke of genius was placed on the first floor. Three-fourths of the displays were placed on the open floor, and the last fourth was in the student center. This design plan made reaching a table an exercise in offensive crowd navigating, elbow spears and all. After scraping our backs against tight walls of other freshmen, Ally and I finally made it to our first table.  

“Our first meeting will be posted on our Instagram! You can find it by scanning the QR code!” 

Not every table was guilty of this passive ‘wave and scan’ model but too many were. It sometimes felt like conveying relevant information (such as normal meeting days, first meeting day, what the club actually does, etc.) was subordinate to the evidently chief goal of obtaining more Instagram followers. The message was clear: we only care about clout, and we can’t be bothered to tell you about our club. I had no idea what clubs conflicted with other clubs, had no sense for what a normal meeting was like, and I couldn’t even see which table Ally had gone to over all the other students. We were lost at sea. 

The free merchandise was welcomed and there were some notable outliers from the chaos described above (specifically Aphros, Economics Society, and Cybersecurity Club). But still, broadly the Club Fair was more of a headache than it needed to be. Next year, spreading out tables would allow for a far less stressful student experience; there’s room in the gym or even space outside for clubs to occupy. With this simple logistical fix, tables would become far more visible and accessible to students; club representatives would be able to talk to students for longer and in a more comfortable atmosphere; and students would be able to hear (and keep track) of their friends, making the whole fair more fun overall. Another necessary fix is cutting Instagram out of the equation. It is an evil app that I want to be on the little as possible, lest I start doom scrolling on reels; but it’s also chore to check your club’s Instagram page for information. Often, posts and stories of newly followed accounts do not appear at the top of a user’s feed, meaning a student must manually check the Insta page of every club they are interested in. It’s annoying. A student should not be expected to check your Instagram story to learn relevant information about how your club functions and how it fits into their schedule.  

These simple improvements would help make the Pace University Club Fair a smoother and more enjoyable experience for students. The changes outlined would also help facilitate more positive experiences occurring between students and clubs, increasing the likelihood a freshman will be successfully recruited for your club.