Recently, one of my organizations I'm involved with on campus has experienced a lot of backlash in regards to one of our largest events - an event that takes months of planning and a lot of money to pull together. This isn't easy, especially after putting in weeks of hard work.

Here is a little insight into what your campus programming board does (at Longwood, at least):

We plan free events for all students and visitors roughly every weekend.

We travel to national and regional conventions in order to do so.

We work consistently throughout the week to reach out to our campus to promote our events and to gain their opinions and perspective.

We meet weekly to go over past and future events as well as any questions or problems that arise.

We are in constant communication, trouble-shooting events, and programming.

Lately, all our time and energy goes towards our single largest event - both attendance wise, security wise, money wise, etc.

Mind you, Longwood University is a SMALL campus. You know everyone or at least know of them. Despite some of the more pressing issues on campus, something that baffles me is how disrespectful organizations can be towards each other.

We all have the common goal is making our campus better and supporting our peers in all we do, so why tear down an entire group just because you may disagree or be unsatisfied?

This creates a toxic environment for all organizations, no matter who you are.

This creates competition amongst organizations where there could be awesome collaborations.

This creates tension amongst students and their corresponding organizations.

Within your campus community, you should be uplifting and encouraging to other organizations; chances are they work just as hard as you do and experience just as much frustration as you. I encourage everyone to think more about what message you are sending throughout campus by what you post on social media or say by word of mouth.