The Weekender, a three-columned, colored flyer sent by email to the inbox of all Andover students on Thursdays, outlines campus events taking place over the weekend. Coordinated by the staff of the Student Activities Office, it displays any and all campus happenings submitted (on time).
In an email to The Phillipian, Stephanie Cormier, Student Activities Coordinator, outlined the process that shuttles events from submission to display in the Weekender. She went further into depth on the needs the timeline meets.
“Events are submitted by noon on Wednesdays and compiled in chronological order. Any submitted ads are put into a template. Any event that doesn’t send in a flyer gets a flyer made. A draft is shown at a Thursday morning admin meeting, final edits happen in the afternoon, and then it’s sent out to the community at 3pm,” wrote Cormier in an email to The Phillipian. “By 12:01pm [on Wednesday] the information already received is being put together and the dominos are set and ready to go, so-to-speak.”
Cormier noted that in past years, art-interested students have been involved in creating the visuals for the Weekender, and photography students would submit photos to be the Weekender’s header in hopes of extra credit. She explained her enjoyment of student collaboration, and encouraged anyone interested in design or photography to reach out to help with the project.
“It’s awesome when we have student helpers who aren’t in a Wednesday sport who like and know PhotoShop and want to come and knock it out so I only need to edit Thursday morning. And I mean A-W-E-S-O-M-E. If anyone out there is interested in helping, email me,” wrote Cormier.
Cormier continued, “I usually pull stock images for the header image, but would love for people to submit their own images and if they want photo credit or not is up to them. There was a time when photography students would get extra credit if I picked their photo for the header. I didn’t know it at the time, but when I found out it made me smile. I liked the engagement… Someone should bring it up with the photography teachers and we can do it again.”
Evie Kim ’27 is a board member of Asian Society, which submits events to the Weekender several times throughout the school year. Kim noted the increase in attendance when hosting events that are submitted on the Weekender.
“Since Asian Society is an affinity space, our bi-weekly emails, or bi-weekly meetings only go out by email. I feel like those often have a really different turnout than our events shown on the Weekender because [Weekender events] are usually open to everyone,” said Kim.
Merson Tang ’29 expressed interest in a greater variety of events in the Weekender. He suggested more student-centered gatherings for studying, which would allow socialization and productivity at the same time.
“I wish study groups were available, like if there’s an event where people can come together to study for a specific subject or for a specific class. I know that we have the Academic Skill Center and peer tutoring, but if there was a place where people can socialize while being productive and being able to help each other, that would be an event that I would go to,” said Tang.
Christopher Capano, Director of Student Activities, emphasized that he enjoys seeing planned events become a success among the students. He underscored his openness to student feedback in order to better tailor events to students’ desires.
“One of the most fun parts of my job is interacting with students at events and hearing if they like it or don’t like it, or if we can maybe change something about it… It doesn’t hurt my feelings when kids don’t show up at an event. I just wish they would tell me why they didn’t come so I could plan something better,” said Capano.
In Cormier’s opinion, one of the most rewarding parts of working on the Weekender is experiencing interaction from the student both with the Weekender. Cormier outlined that these are often small tokens of appreciation or fun replies back to weekly easter eggs that arrive in her inbox, often suggesting something for the next week’s layout.
“It’s really just the little way people (especially students) engage with the Weekender that I love. I feel so behind-the-scenes sometimes that it’s nice getting an email that’s declaring ‘The answer to the riddle is this’ or ‘I LOVE the quote you put in this week…here’s an idea for next!’ or ‘more corgi pictures,’ or the best ever, which is, ‘I HAVE AN IDEA FOR AN EVENT… can we meet?’” wrote Cormier.
