Ainsley Harris ’26
Staff Writer
Fall 2024 has marked the beginning of a new form of communication for SAS and CLORGS on Scripps campus – the MAYA app. SAS introduced the MAYA app (acronym for Me And You Always) to increase event visibility and participation on campus.
Long before the MAYA app was implemented, SAS recognized a problem at Scripps: the lack of student turnout at Scripps events. Even before stepping into her role as the Vice President of Student Activities, Simran Sethi ’26 understood that Scripps’s on-campus events and activities were severely under-attended and had a bad reputation to boot.
“At events that SAS hosts, or Tiernen hosts, or OSE there is a lack of attendance. My freshman year and sophomore year, I had to go to other schools to have fun. I had to go to my friends at CMC or Harvey Mudd, and Scripps was dead. This is a small school, but there’s still over a thousand kids. Like, what’s going on?” Sethi said.
Sethi reflected on her own experiences on campus and diagnosed the problem – Scripps events just get lost in the constant clutter of students’ inboxes and no one checks Engage.
“We get so many emails, right? In all those emails, you lose the emails of the fun events, right? Even within the SAS email, there’s so much information. Chances of someone actually reading through the whole thing is low,” Sethi said.
Upon her election as Vice President of Student Activities, Sethi dedicated herself to finding the solution to the Scripps’ event attendance problem. She decided this summer to create an app that would highlight and spread awareness for Scripps events to be implemented Fall 2024.
However, over the summer, a startup company contacted Sethi in the hopes of launching their community app, MAYA, at Scripps. Instead of learning to code all summer, Sethi was able to work with their interface and personalize it for Scripps-specific needs.
The MAYA app has five Scripps-specific pages: Events, Groups, Announcements, News, and Resources. Under the Events tab, CLORGS and other groups can post their events with relevant location, date, time, and details, directly to the student body. CLORGS can also create groups in the Groups tab and create chats with just their members. The Announcements tab allows live alerts to be sent out to all students to remind them of upcoming events. News shares The Scripps Voice articles directly with the student body. Finally, the Resources tab provides links to various campus resource pages. From one page, students can place a work order, check their Claremont Cash, or set up their Papercut Printer.
“It’s very personalized to Scripps,” Sethi said. “I was like these are our Scripps colors. This is our SAS logo. All these features that we’ve added, I added them based off of what my experiences at Scripps are. We are very open to feedback. There’s new updates getting rolled out almost every week.”
Since the implementation of the MAYA app on campus this fall, SAS has seen a significant rise in student engagement on campus. The Brat Rave was the first official test of its effectiveness.
“All the freshmen were here. Brat Rave was a huge success. That was the first weekend, and one of SAS’s goals this year is the first weekend [where] we set the bar,” Sethi said.
Part of the previous failure of on-campus events was the lackluster precedent of Scripps parties. With this successful party to kick off the year, thanks in part to MAYA, future Scripps events should expect a higher attendance. The MAYA app also promises events run by fellow students, which students are often more incentivized to attend over those hosted by administrative offices.
“It’s not that we’re doing stuff that admin doesn’t know about. It’s just when students know that a[nother] student is running it, they’re more likely to engage with it. It definitely feels more genuine,” said Sethi.
The MAYA app is still in its early stages at Scripps. There are currently over 400 Scripps students on the MAYA app, many of them freshmen. As the MAYA app continues to stake its claim at Scripps, Sethi foresees its increasing relevance.
“It’s gaining traction and we’re seeing more students on it,” Sethi said. “There’s the dorms, right now everyone uses GroupMe. Next year that’s a matter of fully changing over to Maya. They could all be really centralized. That’s the point. We want everything on one platform.”
Within the 5Cs, the MAYA app is only live at Scripps and requires an @scrippscollege.edu to access. However, Sethi predicts that, as the MAYA app gains relevance, the other 5C student governments will incorporate it into their campus life. Then, both Scripps and 5C events will be centralized in one, user-friendly interface.
