(From left) Bidya Kharel, Michelle Soto, and Yai Dennis waited in line for Donna’s Delicious Dozen donuts before going to enjoy Pitch Perfect at CAB’s Movie and Late Night Snacks event.
The Campus Activities Board (CAB) is the rebranded remnant of Activities Management Programming (AMP), the university’s student organization charged with providing students with entertaining events throughout the semester. The name change was intended to display an intent to change and be more in line with other university activities boards.
Mary Kate Gebhart, executive director of CAB, shed light on the rebranding.
“The whole entire purpose of rebranding was to have a clean slate,” Gebhart said.
The change was revealed over several posts on Instagram, all captioned “GOODBYE AMP!”
While Gebhart said, “It’s just a name change,” she and the rest of the CAB board have plenty of plans to make this year different from the previous years as AMP.
The name change was inspired by a recent visit to a National Association for Campus Activities conference.
Gebhart said that while at the conference, “We very quickly realized that whenever we say ‘AMP,’ no one knows what that means.”
Upon the recommendation of Sophia Wilson, associate director of Student and Community Engagement and acting treasurer of CAB, the organization brainstormed and switched to CAB to be more in line with other activities boards across the country.
Grace Addis, a first-year student, said, “I think it probably more clearly shows what they’re about.”
Leigh Kline, a third-year student, said, “I feel like it (the rebrand) makes it (CAB) more accessible for campus life students.”
This idea of accessibility is important to Gebhart, who wants to have a large general body membership in CAB.
“We used to have the largest gen[eral] body, now we don’t have any gen[eral] body,” Gebhart said. “That was a hard pill to swallow.”
Because the current executive board of CAB is all women, Gebhart is conscious of the bias they might be instating into their programming.
“We know that we’re missing certain populations because we all are female-identifying and we know that some of our events don’t cover all of campus,” Gebhart said. “One of our focuses this year is to try and plan events that are fun for everyone on campus, not just pertaining to the female-identifying population.”
Along with the rebrand, CAB has a strong idea of their new direction. The organization wants to hold fewer events and instead host more large-scale events.
