CAC’s Competitors

The University of Oklahoma does not like to produce competition among its student groups and organizations but, let’s be real, it happens.

CAC’s main competitors are the Union Programming Board and in-college organizations. However, both of these differ greatly from CAC. The Union Programming Board has its name because they program specifically within the Oklahoma Memorial Union. In addition, while the Union Programming Board is a student organization, it is governed by graduate students. CAC is allowed to host events all over campus, including within the Union, but simply has to request or pay for the locations it uses on campus. CAC is also strictly a student run organization. Each of the 14 event chairs have a student advisor who strictly advise those students. Those advisors in no way run the event and are not event required to attend the events, CAC’s events are solely put on by the event chair and that event exec. This ensures each student involved will have a unique opportunity to be heavily involved in the production of a campus-wide event.

In-college organizations, such as Lindsey + Asp, PRSSA, the Pre-Med Club and others are also main competition for CAC. CAC typically attracts loyal followers and younger students, and many students at OU are not interested in CAC because they want to become more involved in their college. CAC offers more opportunities for leadership and event planning in a general sense, but offers few opportunities to learn specifically about public relations, advertising, writing or medicine.

I researched the Student Government Associations and student activities programs at other universities in order to understand how these activities operate at other schools. I have not found another college yet that breaks their student activities into different events and allows one student to specifically run each event. The student activities of most other schools are typically run by the entire executive board of their Student Government Association and they have more than 14 events. I pinned some of these schools and some event advertising other schools have done on this Pinterest board, Pinterest Board.