Georgetown is expected to launch a new website today that will consolidate the health and safety resources available to Georgetown students onto one easy-to-use website.
The site, be.georgetown.edu, contain contact and location information for University health, counseling and wellness services, and will include general information about issues that affect students, ranging from alcohol abuse and sexually transmitted infections to acne and homesickness. Students will also be able to make appoints with the Student Health Center from the site and will able to ask confidential questions to trained professionals.
“The site empowers students to help themselves and to help others. Whether their roommate is depressed and they don’t know what to do, or if they themselves have an ankle sprain and don’t know what to do, they can log onto the site and find out what they need to do,” said Kate Hard (CAS ‘04), a member of the FRIENDS Initiative, the main group responsible for the creation of the site. Other groups that participated include the Office of Student Affairs, Health Education Services, the Department of Public Safety, University Information Services, the Coordinator of LGBTQ Community Resources, Counseling and Psychiatric Services, the Student Health Center and the Office of Public Affairs.
Students also played a large part in creating the site. As well as writing some of the site’s content, students were involved in choosing the name, the design and the features of the site. Students also added fun extras to the site, including book recommendations and interesting Internet links .
Once the site is up, Health Education Services Program Coordinator Anjali Downs will monitor and update the site. According to Downs, the site is a work in progress, and new information will be added as needed.
While the site focuses mainly on providing students references to on-campus resources, links to both on-campus and off-campus resources are included. Hard mentioned that the site will also be useful for faculty, who usually get to know students well, to be able to refer students to the proper university resource.
The site is organized into five sections: “body”, “mind,” “soul,” “practicalities” and “emergency.” The “mind” page, for example, features 20 “issue” information links, and links to articles explaining how to develop a low-stress workstyle and to effectively manage time.
As the university launches the site today, it will also be launching its marketing campaign to inform students of the site by handing out tee shirts, post-it-notes, mouse pads and stress balls with the be.georgetown.edu logo on them.
“It will be great if students check out the site this week, but the important thing is that students know that it exists. All of us at some point or another will experience a problem during college. Now there’s a great place for everyone to turn to,” Hard said.
