By Margot Field, Staff Reporter

Senior Sam Austin brought fluorescent orange into the wardrobes of nearly 120 Conestoga students.

Austin’s “Bellz Yeah” T-shirts, originally a joke between members of the bells section in the marching band, have become prevalent thanks to Facebook. Austin used the popular social networking site to take orders for the T-shirts.

Retail companies seeking a younger demographic are among those reaching out to students online. Web sites like Facebook are becoming places where students can connect outside of school to plan in-school activities.

The approaching Jan. 30 winter dance also credits some of its existence to Facebook. Senior class President Kyra Sikora created a Facebook event to generate student interest in the dance. Student Council needed an estimate of how many students would be attending  the dance and turned to the Web site, Sikora said.

“We didn’t need a specific number, but we wanted to see if there was true interest in the dance,” Sikora said.

Student Council members chose to begin online efforts to publicize the dance because of the rising number of students using the social networking Web site. The publicity provided by Facebook cannot be matched in convenience or speed by any other strategy, Sikora said.

Senior John Keough, who has supported the prospect of the January dance since the beginning, has tried to publicize the event through word of mouth.

“In my classes and at lunch I’ve asked a number of people what their thoughts were about a winter dance, and they were all very receptive to the idea,” Keough said.

Yet with roughly 2,000 students at Conestoga, Keough’s method may not allow for the information to reach the majority of possible attendees. With the date of the dance looming, Student Council members deemed the turn to technology necessary in mid-December.

Even with the event posted online, Sikora questions student interest in the January dance.

“I really don’t think we are going to get the magnitude of people we got at homecoming,” Sikora said.

The online event has more than 400 confirmed attendees, a number that continues to rise. Student Council members said that this growing support suggests that the dance will be more successful than in previous years.

Though its uses are becoming more diverse, Facebook will continue to offer distractions to students. Some may continue to use the Web site to raise awareness for student events. However, for many, one specific temptation remains.

“Procrastination,” Sikora said. “I hear [the game] Farmville is addicting.”

More useful applications of Web sites like Facebook are starting to become common practice among students, shown by each click of attendance for the winter dance or by a blur of an orange T-shirt in the hallway.

Margot Field can be reached at mfield@stoganews.com.

Printed originally on p. 6 of The Spoke’s Jan. 12, 2010 edition.

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