 "Photo: Rebecca Moore")
Standing at 7 feet tall, new ad signs have heads turning campus-wide.
The eight kiosks feature campus and corporate advertisements. Four are on the mall, one at every corner, two near the parking lot for the administration building and two near the dorms.
A ninth structure is in the administration parking lot and is a bus stop.
The kiosks were the idea of Pati Alexander, vice president of enrollment and student services. Last spring Alexander saw a disabled student waiting in the rain for a Mobility-Impaired Transportation Service (MITS) bus to pick them up.
Alexander wondered if there was a way to get a shelter on campus for students waiting on transportation in inclement weather. The students may not be able to wait inside a building for fear of missing their ride, said John Gonzales, community outreach coordinator.
Gonzales set out to make Alexander’s idea a reality. He tried to get an old bus stop shelter from the Fort Worth Transportation Authority, but that didn’t pan, out so he did a Google search for bus stop shelters and came across the company MSS Media.
MSS Media provides bus shelters and kiosks free of charge to universities. Two sides of the kiosk will be used by the company for advertising purposes, and the third side is for use by the university. The plan started to form around mid-summer and gained more steam around September of last year.
The university earns 10 percent of all advertising revenue. The money will be put back into the marketing of Texas Wesleyan.
“I believe Ms. Alexander’s intent is for any money, it’s not going to be much, we know it’s not going to be much for this program, but that money to come back to this department to help this department market the university,” Gonzales said.
Gonzales said the university needs more marketing because he’s come across several people who do not know that Texas Wesleyan exists or they confuse it for Texas Woman’s.
The signs that MSS Media currently has placed in their two slots are temporary.
“Those [the current signs] were placed by MSS Media as just fillers. They place those whenever they install kiosks. So after they install them MSS Media puts those up as just general information posters,” Gonzales said.
Gonzales said that the current signs will be replaced next week by a company that bought all of the available slots. The other slots will still belong to Texas Wesleyan and will be used for updates about campus activities, directional arrows to buildings and possibly campus maps at the beginning of each semester as new students learn their way around. Gonzales said that MSS Media solicits the ads but TWU has “first right of refusal.”
“If it’s something that we feel as a university, that’s controversial or just something we don’t think is appropriate, we have the right to say, ‘No, thank you. We don’t want that advertised on our campus,’” Gonzales said.
Some students expressed displeasure with some of the current signs because of their content. “We will not put the ones about STD or rape back up after an ad has been taken down,” Gonzales said. When a company chooses to advertise with those kiosks their signs will be in place for a predetermined time through contract. If there is a break between ad contracts, fillers will be used.
Gonzales said that Alexander and Heath Scott, president of the Student Government Association, chose the current spot of the kiosks. Some students complained of the amount of kiosks visible from the mall, but the four kiosks that surround the mall were placed there so the directional arrows could be used.
“I like them. I think they’re pretty cool. I think it’s useful and helpful, especially with the map because a lot of people aren’t familiar with the campus,” said Thomas Vasquez, junior finance major.
Esther Kautai, sophomore accounting major, said, “They’re kind of helpful because the ones at the dorm have the basketball game schedules.”
One student wasn’t sure what to think the first time she saw the kiosks.
“I thought they were port-a-potties,” said Chelsay Blake, freshman theater major. “I’d like to see information about the different organizations and about the campus itself, not stuff that’s going on in the college world but stuff that’s actually happening here on campus.”
Other students aren’t enthused with the amount of kiosks.
“I think they’re beneficial but I think that so many of them aren’t necessary. The advertisements are perfectly fine but they don’t have to take up the entire thing,” said Trent Sandles, freshman English major.
The kiosks will remain on campus for the duration of a 10-year contract with MSS Media. After that, Gonzales said they have the option to buy the kiosks, re-up with MSS Media or move to a different company.
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