The Lansing Pool’s open swim hours increased earlier this semester from 11 hours per week to 20. However, few students knew about the change. But an Introduction to Public Relations student team is working to change that.
INCREASING AWARENESS
“The goal of our campaign was to increase the awareness students have of the pool, so to increase students’ interest in it,” said sophomore public relations emphasis Collin Callahan, a member of the team spearheading the initiative.
The pool’s open swim hours used to be on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 12:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. and Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6:30 a.m. to 8 a.m. Now, both time sets are available every day during the week, while the weekend hours of 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. have remained the same.
“People just really wanted to come swim. The times were kind of weird and random,” said communication and sciences disorders major Sarah Longinow, who has been a lifeguard at Lansing Pool since last spring.
A recent survey conducted by the public relations team concluded that only 27.6 percent of the 221 students surveyed knew the hours during which the pool is available to students.
Part of the problem, Callahan said, was a lack of updated and eye-catching signs showing the new hours. The aquatics website still has the old hours posted and until recently, the bulletin board outside the pool had not been updated to reflect the changes.
“We just made a new, interesting-looking poster for [the board] … So that kind of led us to brand a new style that makes [the pool] look a little more fun and less like an auxiliary service,” Callahan said.
HEIGHTENED ATTENDANCE
Both Longinow and junior psychology major Karly Cable, another lifeguard, said that many professors swim on their breaks during the school day and have been doing so more often with the change in hours. Biola students and professors are able to swim for free, while there is a $1 admission fee for outside adults and $2 for children.
Biola aquatics manager Steve Eberwein said the time increase was mainly a matter of opportunity.
“[In the] spring, because the university swim team has stopped practicing, we thought about opening it up for the rest of the people,” Eberwein said. “When it gets warmer, we get an increase. We opened up more pool time, so of course we’d get higher numbers [of swimmers].”
As part of the campaign, the PR team proposed for $680.90 from Associated Students to host the Biola Pool Party, which was attended by 116 ticketed students. Out of the 40 attendees surveyed by the PR team, 35 said they were more inclined to use the pool in the future.
Since the pool party on May 2, both Hope Hall and Sigma Hall have thrown pool-centered All-Halls.
The pool project will end at the end of the semester, but Callahan said he believes they have made progress that will entice more students to use the pool. In addition to designing new signs, future plans include advertising the change in hours on several of the TVs around campus.
