A Look into the Odyssey Executive Board

Introduction

The community that I decided to research is the executive board of the Odyssey

newspaper. This paper reflects of Purdue Greek

life by having an all- Greek staff. The paper

focuses on informing and entertaining other

Greek, and non-Greek members of Purdue

University’s campus. I recently began to work

for the Odyssey as a member of the executive

board. My specific job in this discourse

community is to make sure that the customers

are happy with their adds that we put into our

paper every week and assist them to make adds that are geared towards the Greek

community. I chose to study this community because since I recently joined it I had a

relatively a non-bias view and I was interested to learn more about it.

This is a discourse community for six main reasons. For one this community has a

broadly agreed set of common public goals. Our goal as an executive board is to produce

a well-rounded twenty-page paper every week and continue to have happy customers that

give us their ads. We focus on getting everyone on the executive board involved with all

the different branches of the board. We do this by keeping each other informed of our

individual progress each week.

This community also has many mechanisms of intercommunication among its

members. We have a group me, which am an app where you can have large group

messages, where everyone on the executive board is able to be in constant contact with

each other. We also have occasional meetings with the board to discuss what direction

the paper is going and if there are any difficulties going on with anything involving our

board. In addition to this the president of the Odyssey executive board along with the

chief editor, who are both on the executive board, send us weekly updates in our group

message of the previous weeks progress. We also communicate with the executive board

of franchise of the Odyssey each week. They are based in Indianapolis and we each have

one member of this board that we contact individually. These short meetings consist of

catching each other up to speed on where they want our board to take the paper and the

face of the Odyssey. Along with this we discuss the progress out campus paper is having.

This community also has different genres. When we talk in our group message it

is much different to when we have physical meetings and discuss our problems. We also

have some words that are unique to our community. We say things that have to do with

the paper and with Greek life that to anyone that has never been on a paper staff or Greek

life would not understand. A few examples of this lexis are chapter, philanthropy,

function, skip a mean, paper layout, customer ad designs, customer happiness, social

media advertising, and board meeting.

In addition to everyone on the executive board having to be in Greek life, we also

have to be in undergraduate college. We also have to have a major that has to do with

marketing, public relations, advertising, phycology, or business. As a student that is pre-

com and I wish to go into either corporate communications or public relations. This

discourse community is extremely important to me for many reasons one being that

understanding this community will hugely help me in the future work force.

Methodology

To begin my research for this community I conducted two interviews with the

president of the executive board along with the editor and chief. These two people were

fundamental to fully understanding the way that our group has grown and works. When I

conducted my interviews I asked each of the people I chose to interview the same list of

questions with only a few alterations. I did this because I was interested to see what their

different perspectives were of the executive board. I conducted my interview with the

president of the executive board at her Sorority house in a private room. I interviewed

editor and chief at Lawson in a private room as well. I chose to interview the president

and the editor and chief for a few reasons. For one they are both seniors here at Purdue

and have almost four years of experience of being in this discourse community. They

both have become very invested in this community and given it countless house of their

time over the years. I believed them to be the most reliable and experienced members of

our community.

I also observed one of our meetings where we discussed our current direction we

were trying to go and our goals as an executive board for this semester. I did this at

Lawson in a large open room. I also observed our Group me in the Hicks underground

library along with doing research on the online archives. Observing both the meeting and

the Group me was a good way to see the difference in genre that our community has.

Results

History

The Odyssey began to be an official Greek newspaper in 2009. It was originally

founded in 2009 at Indiana University. The parent company is the Olympus Media Group

also founded in 2009. This is the executive board that every executive board is based off

of on campuses countrywide. Our executive board communicates with the main executive

community weekly to make sure that we are on track. This paper has rapidly spread to

schools all over the country and is becoming a huge name at large campuses.

Group Meeting Observation

I observed my discourse community while we were having our monthly group

meeting. This meeting typically covers the progress that each member of our executive

board has made with the paper over the past month and any problems that have occurred.

We had this meeting at Lawson in a large room with a tall celling. The meeting is at 8:00

at night so there are normally only a few people left studying in the main room at this

point. People begin to trickle in pulling up the large chairs and stools that are scattered

around the large open room. The members of the executive board begin to form a semi

circle with the chairs that they collect from throughout the room. At this meeting

everyone from the board was able to come which was rare. The meeting started a little

late because there was one of the members that weren’t on time. We sat patiently and

waited for about five minutes looking at each other impatiently until the president of the

board, Paige, said to me, “Will you text Rebecca and see if she is on her way?”

“Yes of coarse!” I quickly responded. I hurriedly put down my notebook and pen

to grab my IPhone from my purse to text her. Before I could even get my phone out she

bust in the door and with her a cold wind with snowflakes came with her.

“Sorry I’m late!” Rebecca exclaimed to the whole group but looking mainly at

Paige.

“No worried!” said Paige, and with this the meeting began. In the beginning it

was very formal and Paige just briefed us on what headquarters has been doing and the

direction that they want us to go.

“So this week is the Valentines Day issue and we are working on getting the

businesses whose ads are in our paper to change up their current adds to have a V Day

theme. Ali and Rebecca, when you go to deliver the papers this week make sure to talk to

the owners about this.”

“Okay what if they aren’t in the store?” asked Rebecca.

“Just e-mail them and if they don’t answer then we will just not make any

changes,” replied Paige.

Emily, the editor and chief said, “Okay so we need to work on getting a lot more

writers especially male writers! Ali and Rebecca since you two are a freshman and

sophomore we need you guys to recruit new writers so that they will be here for a while.”

The small conversations continued for another fifteen minutes about customers

who had been needy and annoying the week before. There were new proposals due from

the sales reps, that was Rebecca and I, by the end of the week and this was a topic of

conversation for a while.

“I don’t see how they expect us to crank out ten fifteen page proposals by the end

of the week! We have school this is not our job!” Rebecca said with a sound of contempt

in her voice.

“I know but this will really help us in the long run. If the customers are happy

then they will keep paying us to put them in our paper and we can keep getting a better

name on campus,” stated Emily. With this the complaints from Rebecca and I about the

proposals were over. We would just have to suck it up and get them done. Rebecca gave

me a sideward glance that said, “This is bullshit”. I tried to smile back to say it is what it

is, and with this the meeting went on.

The groups dynamic was interesting this week because it was the first time we

had all met this semester. Some of us were catching up, others checking their phones

constantly and looking bored. There was a general feeling of wanting the meeting to be

over and Paige could sense this right when we ran out of things to talk about.

“Thanks for coming guys it was a good meeting! See y’all next month!” She

beamed her huge smile at us as we all started bundling up in our coats, scarfs, and

everything else that we had to keep us warm. As much you could tell everyone was ready

to leave no one wanted to go outside. A few people looked to the left at the huge wall of

glass windows to see what the weather looked like. The wind swirled the snow around in

mini tornadoes and it looked cold as ever. As everyone finally was about to walk out the

door Paige said, “just check Group Me this week I’ll keep everyone updated!” With this

everyone said their last goodbyes and with mixed emotion of wanting to leave and not

wanting to be cold they walked out into the swirling winds of snow.

Interview

During my interview that I conducted on the president and editor and chief of the

executive board I made a few general findings about this discourse community. They

both had similar goals for this year, which goes along that our community shares the

same goals and values. They both said that for our sales team, which is a part of the

executive board, our goal is to reach $100,000 in total revenue by the end of the school

year. When I asked Paige, the president of our community, about communication she had

a very helpful answer that helped me understand fully how we communicate. She said,

“Our group communicates through a couple different mediums. First off, we have a

Group Me messaging group for the executive board where we can all simultaneously

message each other about important deadlines and meeting times. I find this effective,

since we are a newspaper and a newspaper is full of several deadline it is easy to send a

quick text and get an equally quick response. But overall, I think our best way to

communicate is with our weekly meetings where we all sit down and discuss things that

are going on with the paper. We are able to talk about lengthy things that we otherwise

wouldn't be able to talk about though our Group Me.”

When I asked Emily, the editor and chief, about how she defines the writing in

paper she said, “The paper is all about having individual writers show their voice in their

articles. We all have being Greek in common, but never is one article the same. We write

the things that Greeks want to read about and need to know.” When I asked her what the

best way to communicate in the group is she told me that it is our Group me due to the

face that it notifies you on your phone instead of being just another mass email that is a

pain to read. I also asked her what some of the main problems we as an executive board

have faced over the years she has been a member and her answer was very helpful to

understand the community more. She told me that, “In regards to problems

communication, I think that a lot of the problems have been between our own team at

Purdue with the headquarters in Indy. It’s hard to have them understand what’s going on

here when they aren’t a part of the Greek culture here.

One of the most important answers from these two interviews was a story that

Paige told me about a problem she had encountered in this group. “One of the first

problems I encountered with this was when I first became the president of the executive

board it was difficult for everyone to get on board with what I wanted to happen with the

group. I came in guns blazing with all my new ideas and I honestly think that I scared a

few people away. Once I realized that we needed to slowly grow as a team things began

to run like a well oiled machine.”

Group Message Observation

These are all examples of different things that we talk about in our Group

messages. On the one on the farthest to the left we are planning a meeting via group text.

In the middle portion we are discussing a problem that went on with an article in the

paper being too racy. In these messages it is an example of when the highest and lowest

levels of expertise in the community communicate as equals. In this case it’s Paige, who

is the president, and Rebecca, who is a sales consultant. On the message on the far right

we are sharing important information that the group needed to know.

Discussion

While observing and doing my interviews on my discourse community I found

that there are two different sides to this group. One side is the business side that I saw

while doing my observation on the monthly formal meeting. The group started off with

strictly business but while the meeting went on everyone became less worried about the

business side and began having small conversations about personal lives. The other side

that I saw while observing was the funny side where everyone in the group cracks jokes

and sometimes even gets a little upset. I saw this while observing our Group Messages. In

these the members say what ever is on their minds. It also really helps our community to

stay connected over the time that we do not meet in person.

One pattern that I found in my community was that we are constantly in touch via

Group message. Not a single day goes by that there aren’t multiple messages involving

things from cooperate wanting us to try something new to their house having a

philanthropy event and asking us to come support it. The president and other members of

the executive board that are higher up than some all communicate in the same way that

we do. For example, when we recently talked in our Group me about the negative social

media about a certain article that was published in the last paper there was back and forth

conversation about what to do about it between the president and a sales rep. While the

president has more experience and knowledge than a sales rep they talked back and forth

both listening to each other ideas. I found it to be very interesting that the leader of the

executive board communicated in the meetings and in the Group messages in the same

ways that someone who was new communicated in them. Granted the president talks

more in both and had more informative due to their vast knowledge about this

community, but I still found it interesting that there was nothing that they did that made

anyone feel below them.

Conclusion

After all of my research and findings throughout this project I have a new

understanding of this discourse community. I have realized that all the members need to

work together and listen to each other to function well. The group had many different

ways of communicating and keeping in touch that helps them all stay connected. This is a

group that I will only belong in for my next few years as an undergraduate student but the

things that I learn and experience in it will always be with me. This community will teach

me many things that will help me with my future and now that I fully understand how the

group works I have a higher appreciation for it and its members.