For the past five years, the Shoutbox Facebook group has offered a particular sense of unity to the Lawrence community. Following Shoutbox admin and senior Nick Mayerson’s announcement that the Shoutbox will be closing on Friday, Feb. 17, Lawrence’s students and faculty have expressed their gratitude for the group and offered suggestions for future communication platforms.
According to former Shoutbox admin and Lawrence alum Ada Stelzer ‘21, the Shoutbox originated in 2017, when she and Mayerson were both first-year students. Stelzer was originally an admin for the Facebook meme page now known as The Lawrence Meme Exchange: Honor Code Memes for Plagiarizing Teens. As the meme page rapidly gained popularity, student organizations began using the page to advertise their events, causing an influx of posts unrelated to the page’s original purpose.
When Mayerson noted that the clubs were posting on the meme page because they had no designated space to promote themselves, they recommended creating the Shoutbox as a separate, more organized communication hub. Stelzer, Mayerson and fellow admin Grace Foster opened the current Shoutbox page in Winter Term of 2019.
Mayerson noted that at the time of the Shoutbox’s inception, there was no single platform that enabled communication amongst students or between students, faculty and administration, and that the Lawrence University Community Council (LUCC) had no place to engage with the rest of the student body. Furthermore, outreach for student organizations was limited because there was no accessible central online hub for advertising.
“The only ways to gather eyes on your club or event were through posters and club fairs,” said Mayerson.
Stelzer and Mayerson worked with fellow admins Grace Foster and Miri Villerius to develop the Shoutbox into the main unofficial online communication center at Lawrence. Although current students form the majority of the Shoutbox’s 1,300 members, it has also grown popular amongst alumni, faculty and administration. Faculty members including DEIA Affinity Groups Coordinator Helen Boyd Kramer, Associate Professor of Government Jason Brozek, Associate Professor of Religious Studies Constance Kassor and Dean of Spiritual and Religious Life Linda Morgan-Clement frequently use the Shoutbox to communicate with the student body.
Boyd Kramer praised the Shoutbox for its accessibility and for encouraging “cross-pollination” between the various departments and divisions of Lawrence.
“It was a great place to post events; I often answered questions, and other times it was nice to just learn about things going on and get the “temperature” of campus,” said Boyd Kramer.
Kassor explained that while the Shoutbox is centered around helping students, it has also been a great resource for faculty.
“I used the Shoutbox to ask questions to which I couldn’t easily find answers, to advertise classes and events and to keep up on events happening in the LU community,” she said.
Mayerson said that admins spent up to 20 hours a week maintaining the Shoutbox during peak times. Stelzer explained that most of the work involved moderating occasional disputes and adjusting the rules of the platform as necessary.
The Shoutbox became even more crucial to campus life in the spring of 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic required a shift to virtual learning. Shoutbox admins used the platform to keep students informed on COVID policies and to enable opportunities for socialization despite reduced in-person interaction.
For example, when the Band Booking Committee (BBC) and the Committee on Diversity Affairs (CODA) collaborated to host a virtual edition of Lawrence’s annual LUaroo music festival in 2021, they posted a poll on the Shoutbox and asked Lawrence students to recommend performers they wanted to feature. The Shoutbox admins also moderated conversations about COVID policies and regulations, and when the campus transitioned back to in-person learning, the Shoutbox helped student organizations recruit new members by advertising their meetings and events.
“During the first year of the pandemic, we worked especially hard to disseminate the information sent out by the administration about Lawrence’s policies, writing up summaries of their mass emails and providing space for people to discuss the policies respectfully,” said Stelzer.
Mayerson and Stelzer agreed that the Shoutbox served its intended purpose of fostering connections and informing students about events at Lawrence. It gave student organizations a space to advertise their events to a wider audience, enabled discussions about major policy changes and allowed students to ask questions about campus and get helpful answers from their peers.
When looking for future alternatives to the Shoutbox, Mayerson, Stelzer and Boyd Kramer all agreed that Facebook is no longer the ideal communication platform due to its decreasing popularity amongst the next generation of college students. Mayerson and Stelzer both argued that while Discord is a popular and useful platform with great organizational features, previous attempts to create Discord servers for Lawrence students have not been as successful as the Shoutbox.
Boyd Kramer pointed out that it will be difficult to create a single platform that unites students, faculty, and administration because the older generation tends to prefer Facebook while younger people are increasingly active on Discord and TikTok. She also argued that since social media is constantly evolving, Lawrence might need to continuously create new communication platforms to keep up with the current generation’s needs.
“There’s the age-old issue of all online communication – good moderation, ground rules, community building mindfulness, etc. That can be time consuming no matter what technology is available,” Boyd Kramer said.
Both Mayerson and Stelzer remarked that managing the Shoutbox was a rewarding and educational experience. While both admitted that disagreements and controversies sometimes arose, Stelzer said that working as an administrator taught her a lot about fostering clear communication and moderating discussions in a large group.
“We were constantly trying to strike delicate balances—letting people express themselves without silencing others, allowing groups to advertise without burying each other, and so on,” said Stelzer. “Creating an effective communication hub is much harder than it looks, and working on the Shoutbox helped me understand all the nuances that are involved.”
“Lawrence is an incredibly insular community politically,” Mayerson added. “Creating a bubble only further isolates dissenting voices.”
In conclusion, Mayerson said that running the Shoutbox has been one of the most valuable learning experiences of their time at Lawrence.
“I’ve loved getting to see all the acts of kindness Lawrentians and professors get up to,” they said. “It’s been an honor to get to put this together and see it flourish, and I cannot wait to see what someone does next.”
Read about the Shoutbox in News.