Website presents 'after dark' events

The students asked for it, and on April 17, the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students, the Office of Communications and the Social Opportunities Committee gave it to them. That day, the trial version of Princeton After Dark, a nighttime events calendar for students, went online.

The site will "inform Princeton students about the array of social, cultural, and entertainment events" on campus on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights, according to an email sent to the student body by Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Students Tom Dunne this past weekend.

The version of the website released Saturday is a draft, to be modified according to student input. The official site will be launched this September.

PAD was created because "there was an interest in helping promote social alternatives on campus," Dunne said. "Some people went to parties on Prospect [Ave.] by default because they knew something would be going on there."

By providing information about alternative nighttime activities, Dunne said he hopes to avoid "what students see as a monolithic social culture."

William Robinson '04, who suggested the initial idea for the project along with other students in the Social Opportunities Committee, said there was a demand for PAD because "students simply do not use the University calendar to post events or to look for things to do at night — it is not student-friendly."

Moreover, Robinson said, students are often not aware of campus events because they routinely delete campus-wide emails.

PAD, however, is a more viable form of advertising for student groups, the athletics department and "anyone else putting on an event open to the entire student body," Robinson said, because "it centralizes advertising. By hopefully inspiring a larger audience to attend these community-building events, the site should benefit the student body tremendously. [PAD] should be an easy tool for students to help figure out their weekend plans."

The site is not intended as a replacement for the Princeton Portal Project site — find.princeton.edu — which was taken over by the USG earlier this year from Matt Stack '04, who created the site last year.

Robinson also suggested that a student-friendly homepage like the portal project site is still necessary.

In his message, Dunne asked that students email suggestions for improvements or additions to the site to Robinson.

"During this initial two week period, what we're interested in is getting feedback from students," Dunne said. "Then, we'll refine it . . . eventually it will be searchable off the University homepage and linked from a lot of different sites."

Dunne is also excited about the possibilities that the site's technology provides. Slated for the fall, for example, is the ability for students to receive text messages on wireless devices about certain events. "It is really encouraging that we can have some calendar resources available to students that are cutting-edge, that students will embrace and really be impressed with. Some of the aspects we plan to add on in the future are things the average student hasn't expected. It will be a more dynamic way for students to engage in alternative social activities," Dunne said.

The site, in addition to listing campus events, offers links to the athletic events calendar, McCarter Theater, Richardson Auditorium, Performing Arts, UFO, NJ Transit, Pollstar and local restaurants, as well as a listing of movies in the area.