A little less than two months ago, the Undergraduate Student Association launched its new website (www.canisiususa.com), creating a buzz across campus. The site, designed by the Chair of Marketing Tán Ho, received a great deal of positive feedback from the student senate as well as the general student population.

The student senate was extremely happy with the website and the new Chair of Marketing position, according to Executive Vice President Anthony Kroese. Furthermore, Google Analytics showed that during the first week there were 150 unique visitors and about 3,000 page views to the website.

Based on these statistics, the website was already well on its way to accomplishing the senate's goal of opening up communication between USA and the student body.  

One of the main reasons the Chair of Marketing was created was to facilitate communication between students and the senate. The proposed solution was a unique domain name that would be easily accessed by students, rather than searching through the maze of the College's official website.

Traditionally, students would have to use the Canisius website's search engine to find a sparsely updated website. The new site was clean and accessible, providing quick downloads to senate meeting minutes, a place for students to leave comments and suggestions, and news from the senate and its member organizations, including the student programming board.

In effect, the new site created an avenue for students to reach their government.

Open communication ceased and confusion set in, however, when students tried to access the new site only to find it had disappeared at the beginning of 2012.

Kroese and USA Adviser Brian Smith said that they were unsure of what exactly happened with the website. Ho was the only one able to clear up some confusion with his explanation of the chain of events.

After hearing about the website's launch on Dec. 2, 2011, Canisius College Director of Web Services Chuck Pustelnik e-mailed Mr. Smith and requested to speak with Ho about the website. According to Ho, Pustelnik explained to Ho that USA's website should be under the Canisius College template rather than their own, because USA is such an important organization at the college and is supposed to represent the entire student body, according to Ho.

However, when asked for a comment, Pustelnik wrote:

"I did not ask for it to be taken down and I am not aware of anyone in the Canisius administration that asked for the site to be taken down."

Still, it was upon his urging that Ho chose not to renew the domain name.

Smith reiterated Pustelnik's views in his explanation of the current state of the USA website, saying that the College wants the USA site to be designed in the same template as the rest of the Canisius website.

Initially, Ho was confused and upset by the administration's reaction to the site.

"I did not understand why other organizations, such as The Griffin, were able to have their own website and not USA. It did take some extensive coding to get the website the way I wanted it to look like. So, in regards to it being taken down, I was pretty upset that all of my hard work went down the drain."

Despite this, Ho respected Pustelnik's request. When it came time to renew the website's web hosting contract with GoDaddy.com on Dec. 29, USA did not renew.

Since then, the content from Ho's website has been transferred onto the canisius.edu site, causing more disappointment for Ho.

"I was slightly insulted that whatever content I had up was simply copied and pasted onto the Canisius College website. No formatting was done at all."

Kroese explained that USA had come to an agreement with the administration not to renew the subscription and they agreed to keep the layout of the new site, adding that the latter condition has not happened.

Despite his frustration, Ho noted that "Chuck was very kind and accommodating about the website being transferred over to Canisius servers. He provided some good points about why the website should be on Canisius' servers."

In his conversation with Ho, Pustelnik explained that if the website was on Canisius servers, he could train people how to maintain the website after Ho was gone, and that the web hosting would be completely free.

"Moving to the College's network will also save USA money in annual hosting and maintenance fees, and the College can provide various services at no charge to USA to support their website," Pustelnik wrote to The Griffin.

Currently, Pustelnik and the rest of the office of web services are working with Ho to move the canisiususa.com site to College servers.

 "The USA site has been regularly maintained in the past with the assistance of the office of web services and CPLD," explained Pustelnik, "and I am happy to continue to work with them."

No matter what the website ends up looking like, Ho is determined to serve his role and create a medium in which students can freely communicate with their student government.

He explained that as things stand now, student concerns are merely spread by word of mouth, which does not guarantee that these concerns will ever reach the Senate.

As he continues to re-design the website, meeting the needs of administration and the students, the driving force is creating open communication.

"Once students have an efficient medium in which to express their comments, issues, or concerns, then we can make Canisius College a better place for everyone."