Preface
I realize, having spent my freshman year as a Mason Korea student within the Incheon Global Campus, that something that I want to see more of here with the community is tighter integration and networking between students across all universities. While there have been many events for all IGC students to participate in on-campus, a channel for them to connect and talk amongst each other is something that’s been lacking.
Thankfully, as the new President of Mason Korea Student Government, this was immediately one of my top priorities to address. I first started off with what communities or platforms students on the Incheon Global Campus use most - that would be, for Korean students, Everytime (에브리타임).
Which platform?
As much as I would love to see a unified Everytime community or board, such an idea brings with it some logistical and practical issues, first of which is that unifying communities that have already existed separately is… hard. I contacted Everytime as well, and they confirmed that this would be something hard to implement on their side. In addition, the fact that most international students don’t use Everytime (and that it’s a very Korean-centered community) is something that I had in mind.
Then what is a platform that both Korean and international students use to communicate? The answer is Discord, albeit much bigger in the US than it is here. Plenty of universities have already implemented it as their (un)official social platform, which I could use as a blueprint to start off on.
Post-implementation
After a round of votes among the IGC Student Union and Mason Korea students and creating the server with its appropriate channels (unified in Korean and English, and per university), it was time to spread the word through all universities.
Through our first week or so, we got around 200 members from the Incheon Global Campus joining the server - truly goes to show how teamwork makes the dream work. (Thank you IGC Student Union!) One thing though: activity on the server is something we could improve. Whether it be more promotion or the fact that Discord as a higher education community is a foreign concept (and that Everytime is anonymous in its posts), this is something we’ll have to think about if we plan to continue the server in the long-term.