Students listening in to the speaker of the ADSAC meeting in the Xfinity Center.
The Athletic Department Student Advisory Council took a break from its usual policy agenda Thursday night to brainstorm ways to build more exciting, inclusive athletics traditions at this university.
ADSAC, which consists of student-athletes and representatives from organizations such as the Residence Hall Association, the Student Government Association and the Mighty Sound of Maryland, convened in an Xfinity Center conference room to receive guidance from the Academy for Innovation & Entrepreneurship, a university department partnering with ADSAC to facilitate the creative process.
Before brainstorming, AIE innovation specialist Meenu Singh asked members to refer to the two or three student interviews they each conducted before the meeting. The interviews were designed to help pinpoint issues that students have with university athletics.
“We kind of had a conversation, shared feelings, gathered feelings and created a snapshot of what each person felt related to athletics,” said Ian Moritz, a junior finance and management major and ADSAC chairman . “Our end goal was empathizing.”
Students’ responses ranged from love for the hype and energy of university athletics to concerns about commuter disconnect, the lack of a sense of community, students leaving before the end of football games and people — especially freshmen — not knowing where to find pregame and postgame events.
“There was a young lady who said in her undergrad she attended four games total, and she saw it as a waste of her time,” said Patrick Cole, a senior kinesiology major and member of the Terrapins men’s track and field team. “She kind of said it almost with a disdain. … How many other people are thinking like that? What do we have to do to make it worth their time?”
ADSAC members split into groups for a 15-minute rapid-fire brainstorming session to contemplate solutions.
Ideas included puppy tailgates, turtle races at halftime, pregame parties on the McKeldin Mall, a commuter taxi with university President Wallace Loh, breakfast bars for commuters, prizes for staying an entire game and serving alcohol at the stadium, which the Athletic Council will likely discuss at its Oct. 27 meeting.
“Athletics has a huge influence at this university and on our identity,” Moritz said. “We [at ADSAC] have a huge opportunity to get to talk to the athletic department and try to influence it.”
Some ADSAC members also participated in a “whiteboard walkers” event Friday, in which they walked around with dry-erase boards and asked students to offer their own solutions.
“Whiteboard walkers is a good way to take some of the questions that were brought up here … to the student body,” Singh said. “This was just one group of students brainstorming, but we have a whole campus.”
With the initial brainstorming session complete, Singh said the next step is to narrow the focus to certain groups, such as commuters, freshman and people who leave games early. From there, they will develop ideas specifically tailored to those crowds.
In a couple of weeks, she said, ADSAC will hopefully begin prototyping some of the ideas to gage student reactions.
“If there are some ideas that are really high-energy, I don’t see why they couldn’t be tested out this semester,” Singh said.
