Relief for Haiti

If print isn’t dead, then it is certainly dying. It’s time the University went completely electronic with its admissions process.

General Interest Meeting

7 p.m. Tuesday, 209 Manning Hall — An open meeting for students interested in getting involved with relief efforts. For more details, visit the Facebook group “Students Supporting Haiti.”

PID Drive

Sign up with your PID to donate money from your expense account to support Haiti relief efforts. Students throughout campus have sheets for students to sign. Students are also invited to go to the Campus Y to sign out their own sheet.

Fashion Show

6 p.m. Feb. 11, Michael Hooker Research Center — The Student Global Health Committee’s annual “Fashion Show Your Love.”

In addition to the fashion show, the event will feature music, dancing, free food and a silent auction of goods provided by local businesses.

Proceeds will go to Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) for disaster relief and rebuilding in Haiti.

Red Cross

Text “Haiti” to 90999 to make an immediate $10 donation to the America Red Cross, charged to your cell phone bill.

Nourish International

Nourish International is donating all proceeds from this week’s Hunger Lunch to earthquake relief in Haiti. Come to the Pit on Jan. 20 between 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. for all-you-can-eat rice, beans and corn bread for $5. All proceeds will go to Partners in Health/Zanmi Lasante, an organization with 20 years of experience in Haiti.

Campus Y

Extended Disaster Relief, a committee of the UNC Campus Y Center for Social Justice, is channeling the effort to collect relief funds. Extended Disaster Relief is a student-run organization that is partnering with national and international non-government organizations committed to utilizing funds directly for relief for Haiti. Please visit campus-y.unc.edu if you wish to make a donation.

Yele Haiti

Text “Yele” to 501501, which will automatically donate $5 to the Yele Haiti Earthquake Fund, charged to your cell phone bill. 

Each year the UNC admissions department sends out between 60,000 and 70,000 paper applications to prospective students.

These high school seniors have not requested the documents, but by sending paper applications the University hopes to lure them to Chapel Hill.

This mail blitz would be a nice ploy to improve the student body if it worked. But the problem with it is that it doesn’t.

Last year, only 2 percent of the applications submitted were paper versions; the rest were submitted through the University’s Web site.

With such a low tally for the number of printed applications being submitted, the University is right to reevaluate its current strategy. 

Director of Undergraduate Admissions Stephen Farmer said that his office will study the idea of abandoning the paper application sent to every prospective student

The change could save the University around $30,000, Farmer said.  

It is time for such measures because the printed application has become all but obsolete.

If UNC stops preemptively mailing applications, students without access to a computer will still be able to request a paper version.

The next logical step would be for the University to adopt the Common Application.

The Common Application is a student’s one-step approach for applying to nearly 400 universities, including Harvard, Princeton and Yale.

Rather than having to go through the mind-numbing forms and a myriad of essay questions on many applications, students using the Common Application only have to fill out one form and essay set along with a few supplementary questions for different schools.

Farmer indicated that UNC might consider switching to the Common Application in the future.

Let’s hope that time comes sooner than later.