By Nate West
News Editor
Imagine SB YOU!, the branding competition among residence halls and garden apartments, is in its third round of voting, with only four residence halls remaining.
The competition takes sbu.interviewstream.com, a website which provides practice interviews for Bona’s students looking to gain experience, and asks participants to brand their floor, then residence hall and eventually the entire university, according to Angie Wolfe.
“What we mean by brand is knowledge of your individual uniqueness,” Wolfe, assistant director of the Career and Professional Readiness Center, said. “Sort of looking at the individual, unique qualities in each person, but really being able to find out the knowledge of what you bring and who and what you are as an individual.”
There are three levels of competition Wolfe said. The first level, which required five of nine questions to be answered, asked participants to brand their floor. Participants who advanced to the second round answered three questions, branding their residence hall. From there, those who advanced were asked one question to brand the entire university.
The competition was broken up by floor, with each floor having what Wolfe calls a “Brand Ambassador” who would represent his or her floor.
“Some of the first questions were ‘If your floor was a cereal, what kind of cereal would it be and why?’” Wolfe said. “We had some really great answers. One floor said, ‘Our floor would be Frosted Flakes because we’re grrrrrrrrreat!’”
After the first round, Wolfe and other members of the CPRC staff selected eight floors, one from each residence hall and apartment. Four halls advanced from there, all of whom won a pizza party for their floor. April 3 was the deadline for remaining participants to answer their questions.
Rick Trietley, vice provost for student life, will announce the winner of the competition next week. The final question was ‘If you had to describe your experience at St. Bonaventure University in three words, what would they be and why?’ Wolfe said.
Wolfe said she is hopeful this will become an annual event.
“I think it was a lot of work because it was the first time we’d done it. Now that we sort of have a pilot under our belt, I think it will be a lot of fun to do year after year,” she said.
Wolfe said she wasn’t expecting to have many students participate, but wasn’t very surprised with the large turnout . She credits the ability to take the interviews at any time, from any place — an ability Wolfe said she wanted students to have while making the competition.
Above all else Wolfe has taken away from the competition, one thing stands out, she said.
“(It showed) Bonaventure students willingness to step out of the box and be creative, to grab a hold of something in particular. The students that did this and represented their floor, even though they were fun in their answers, I could feel that they were carrying the weight of their floor on their shoulders,” Wolfe said. “They felt like they had been asked to represent here, and they really took that part of it seriously.”
