This year, new and returning students at Fordham University had to register and log onto accounts on the new Rams Involved Student Engagement Platform. 

According to Cody Arcuri, assistant dean for Student Involvement, the move to the Rams Involved platform was a response to software company Campus Labs’ decision to discontinue Fordham’s previous platform, OrgSync, as of July 1. 

“OrgSync is being phased out by Campus Labs, which prompted us to explore options that can grow with the needs of our clubs and organizations,” said Arcuri in a statement for the Ram.

Campus Activities Board (CAB) President Lianna Meehan, FCRH ’21, has welcomed the switch to Rams Involved with optimism. 

“I really like [Rams Involved],” said Meehan. “I think it has a lot of new benefits that suit student leaders’ needs well and helps them communicate with a wider audience of students

Other student leaders have welcomed the change more reluctantly because of how helpful OrgSync had been in years prior. Ina Patrice Gonzales, FCRH ’21, president of the Fordham University Philippine-American Club, said she felt the previous platform was straightforward and easy to use. 

“OrgSync was very organized … You were able to navigate easily through the platform to see events many different clubs were hosting,” said Gonzales. 

Gonzales also said her experiences with OrgSync’s capacity to reserve spaces on campus was positive overall. Evan Allen, FCRH ’21, president of the Fordham Ramblers, agreed.  He said he has found a few redundancies in that same capacity on Rams Involved and that it is simply not as user-friendly as OrgSync was.

The lack of a notification center for such reservations on the Rams Involved platform has been troublesome, according to Gonzales. 

“This makes it difficult to keep track of what events have requests made for them and which do not yet,” Gonzales said.

Both Gonzales and Allen said they could not find certain features that OrgSync had previously displayed very clearly. Allen mentioned that up until last week he had been unable to view any of the Ramblers’ budgetary information. 

Annika Fagerstrom, FCRH ’21, president of the Mimes and Mummers, said she also found that OrgSync had more useful features that Rams Involved does not have. 

“Back when we used OrgSync, I would use the site nearly every day; with the new Rams Involved I don’t think I’ve even logged in the last month. It just doesn’t have enough utility at the moment,” she said. 

Allen said OSI could improve communication between their office and club leaders when it comes to Rams Involved. He said the Ramblers lost nine years of filing they had kept on OrgSync during the transition. 

“The Office for Student Involvement gave us no warning whatsoever that OrgSync would be suddenly inaccessible,” said Allen. 

Allen also said that the middle of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic was not an optimal moment to begin a university-wide transition to a new co-curricular organizational platform. According to Arcuri, the necessary transition away from the discontinued OrgSync was indeed affected by the pandemic. 

“The pandemic did slow down the process of transitioning to the Rams Involved platform, especially with evaluations and demos,” said Arcuri. “However, since the system does exist in the cloud, working virtually on the project was easier than other projects that would require in-person meetings.”

Student leaders like Gonzales and Allen have found that the new platform has not alleviated any of the difficulty for student leaders brought about by the pandemic. 

Emma Paolini, FCRH ’21, vice president of Fordham Experimental Theater (FET), noticed additional difficulties with the new platform. She said the club pages are usually offline when she visits the site. 

“[That] makes it difficult for me to recommend that new members use the site to learn about our club,” she said.