Although Brandeis school spirit may seem lacking to some, the issue could be due to the fact that most students do not know when sports games are occurring, or they are too busy to search for sports events to attend. In hopes of changing this, the athletics department has set up a new rewards system to get the word out about sports events on campus and to reward those who attend.
The We The Jury app, according to the Assistant Director of Athletics for Marketing, Promotions and Community Relations, Andrew Vatistas, is “primarily used as a way to promote student attendance at varsity athletic events.” This somewhat new app, created last October, provides the user with a list of different upcoming home games under the “Events” section.
We The Jury operates on a points system based on the number of events that a user “Checks In” at through the app. In order to do this, the student has to be at the specified location for a given event and press the “Check in to this event” button at the time that “Check in” starts. For doing this, the student will earn a set amount of points; most events are worth 20 points.
Once users have saved up a good amount of points, there are a variety of prizes that they can redeem their points for. Under the “Rewards” section of the app, one can earn a five dollar gift card to Chillbox in exchange for 200 points. 850 points can be redeemed for a one-year Spotify and Hulu student subscription and 1000 points can be used to earn a pair of wireless Apple Airpods.
Vatistas noted that students can also interact with the app through “the fan cam or social media section of the app.” Beyond the app, Vatistas wrote in an email that Gosman and Brandeis Athletics have also encouraged school spirit through “increased marketing/signage in athletics and on main campus, improved @BrandeisJudges social media presence and teaming up with other departments on campus for co-sponsored events,” such as “DCL, Orientation, Student Union [and] Brandeis Beacons.”
Though he knows that students at Brandeis are very busy, Vatistas hopes that the We The Jury app will give an extra boost to student attendance at sports events.
“I think that students are passionate about their Brandeis experience, and it is up to them as to how/where they want to spend their free time. I think a big problem at any college or university is that there is so much going on in a given week on campus, it’s difficult to compete with other events that might be of interest to a particular student,” wrote Vatistas. “As a marketer, it is my job to get our information out there as best I can and to make our product as attractive as possible in hopes that students will choose to come to an athletic event when they have free time.”
Though students at Brandeis are notorious for having a lot of commitments on their plates, the We The Jury app will hopefully make attendance at Brandeis sports events a bigger commitment for more students.
