New business on the Freshman Council’s agenda last week was a proposed bill titled “Mobile Campus Resolution,” which seeks to provide timely updates and daily business offers to university students via their cell phones.
Sponsored by council member Jamie Lonie, the bill would allow the company Mobile Campus to set up shop at the University of Tennessee to promote a text messaging service that would benefit students in academic and extracurricular areas, including informing students about discounts at local businesses.
The process of making the program work would be for students to enter their cellular phone numbers into the Mobile Campus database. Any wireless provider would work.
From there, the students will select the companies from which they want to receive advertising, and those ads would offer rebates to the student. Examples are Papa John’s offering a “buy one, get one free” deal or Krystal offering a free large soda with a purchase of a “sack full.”
The money is made when Mobile Campus sells advertisements on students’ cell phones to the different businesses near and around campus. Each day, the student will receive no more than two advertisements but will receive texts regarding academics — such as updates on canceled classes, the T-Link schedule and alerts of new information on Blackboard — throughout the day.
The University of Florida was one of the first to subscribe to the program. Florida has had the program since 2005 and has witnessed great success bringing discounts and helpful information to the students, SGA President Kristi Bogle said.
The program made its way to UT after Bogle spoke with Florida’s former student body president about it. She pitched the program to the Freshman Council by promoting it as a free service allowing a choice of benefits and notices to students.
A few of the benefits include discounts at local restaurants on the strip, possible give-aways from UT, daily prizes awarded just for being a member and potential revenue from advertising sales for the university.
Bogle said a portion of the revenue would eventually make its way through UT and trickle down to campus groups, such as SGA. Such was the case at Florida, where Mobile Campus CEO George Tingo said that if his company were to acquire half the student population as members, a seven-digit figure would be paid to the university over a five-year period.
The “Mobile Campus Resolution,” passed by the Freshman Council Jan. 18, encourages university officials to follow in Florida’s footsteps.
“SGA has been pushing (it) for a few months and the point of this resolution would be to tell the administration the students want this service. We would like to implement it as soon as possible rather than years from now,” Bogle said.
Freshman Council Chair Zak Kelley could not agree more.
“It is a really neat program and would offer safety features that would benefit everyone,” Kelley said.
The resolution went to a vote and passed with 32 votes for and one against. The next step in making Mobile Campus a reality is for the other SGA bodies to vote in favor of the plan, urging the administration to adopt it.
“We are hoping to pass a similar resolution through the Student Senate next Tuesday,” Bogle said.
Florida and the University of Texas-Austin are the only universities currently subscribing to Mobile Campus.
