By Abigail Vachon
Correspondent
With tons of different organizations hosting a variety of activities each day, in addition to the events the College hosts, it can be difficult to keep up with everything. Wiredorm.com is three students’ solution to keeping the community in the loop.
Wiredorm.com is a website for students at the College, made by students at the College, said Will Abreu, junior marketing major and marketing director of the site, explaining also that only those with an “@tcnj.edu” e-mail address have access to the site.
“It’s basically a resource for students to stay informed about what’s going on at (the College),” Wiredorm’s founder and president, senior management major Brent Keyes, said, “and also a resource for students to interact with one another to find out about events and for organizations to send out information to their members.”
Although the brainchild of Keyes, Abreu and Sam Kohler, junior philosophy major and vice president of Wiredorm, came onto the project after three shared similar experiences coming to the College.
All transfer students, they felt that they were at a disadvantage when trying to get involved with the campus
community.
“I really want to make it easier to get involved on campus,” Kohler said, explaining that Wiredorm.com is a resource to bring the campus community to one place — instead of having to look on the College’s website, Facebook and flyers around school to try to find out what activities are happening.
Although the website is in its early stages now, the creators think that once more organizations get involved, the site will really flourish.
“People in organizations want people to know about their events, and we want people to attend their events,” Kohler said.
Other than just events, the website differentiates itself from Facebook by playing host to different resources that can be helpful to any student at the College. Instead of focusing on social networking, the website focuses on different aspects of student life to make it a one-stop-shop for all things College-related.
Wiredorm.com has a marketplace to buy and sell anything from books to iPods, a dining tab to give reviews on local eateries and an answers section for students to post and respond to College-related questions.
“I think it’s going to be a good resource for freshmen and transfer students,” Keyes said. “It would benefit them the most.” According to its founders, the website will help new students jump into campus life headfirst, taking away some of the unease of being in unfamiliar territory.
“Wiredorm has the potential to be an amazing resource so long as it continues to evolve to fit the needs of (the College’s) students,” Kevin Zish, a senior cognitive science major who has used the website, said. “It will be interesting to see if the incoming freshman class of 2015 makes the site their own and be the first class to fully utilize it.”
Keyes, Kohler and Abreu have lots of ideas in place for when the website reaches more of the student body, including a new ProfRecord, getting local businesses involved to get students’ discounts and possibly branching out to College alumni.
“We’re going to let the students decide what direction the site is going to go in,” Keyes said, explaining that they keep a close eye on what pages of the site get the most activity.
