Ball State University students are becoming accustomed to the new ID swiping program that most on-campus events are using.
Lynda Wiley, assistant vice president for Student Affairs and director of Student Life, said even though the ID swiping program started last year, the program will be more enhanced this year.
"We, for years, have measured the volume of our programs," she said. "The portable card swipe allows us to get a much more accurate count."
Before card swiping, Student Affairs would count heads or use a clicker to determine the students attending events.
Mitchell Isaacs, assistant director of Student Life, said he thinks the new system is an improvement.
With a more precise count, Student Affairs can better plan programs according to what students want and are interested in.
"When you have hundreds, sometimes even thousands of students show up [to events], that's a good indication that [the program] is something you should keep doing and [it's] a program students are really responsive to," Wiley said.
Card swiping also allows Student Affairs to track trends and patterns of students that attend the events.
They already track retention and graduation rates of groups such as fraternities, sororities, Student Volunteer Services and Excellence in Leadership, but now Student Affairs will be able to make programming decisions based on student information.
They will look for certain trends "like [if] students that attend at least three events a semester are higher or are they more likely to be retained," Wiley said.
Isaacs said since the Excellence in Leadership program is also a class, the portable card swipe is a convenient device to keep track of students who attend the workshops for credit.
"It's a lot more convenient than having to deal with sign-in sheets, [or] slips of paper," he said. "[It's a] nice, simple technology that keeps accurate lists of who's attending. And really more important than who's attending, keep an accurate record of how many people are attending."
Card swiping might also help determine the funding of programs. If the program is popular enough, or if attendance rates are consistently high, the funding can increase.
"A lot of our programs do come directly from student activity fees, and we want to make sure what we are doing is worthwhile for students," Wiley said.
So far, some of the most popular programs are Late Nite and the Activities Fair, as well as events sponsored by the multicultural organizations and Spectrum.
However, the portable card swipes won't be used at all Ball State events.
"Really, our philosophy is that we do the best we can, but there are some events that it's either not appropriate to scan or not feasible," Wiley said.
Additionally, if a student's ID will not go through the card swipe due to damage on the ID or a malfunction with the machine, the student will still be allowed into the event.
"The goal really is not to ever keep someone from coming into an event," Wiley said. "It's just trying to help us do the best job we can and programming to meet students needs and seeing if there are some ways that students are engaged that help drive the direction of how we work with student programs."
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