Anya Mullen – Opinions Editor

Word of mouth at Bishop’s is more powerful than any app can be. For better or for worse, information spreads like wildfire here at BU. Everyone knows everyone, whether through work, class, sports or other activities around campus. At a school with just under 3,000 students, everyone is in such close quarters that it’s hard to stay out of the loop most of the time, and everyone here is a massive interconnected web.

Image courtesy of Anya Mullen

Most, if not all, student-run clubs at BU have Instagram pages where they post about what their club is up to. For people who don’t have Instagram, there is the Dish, and the events page on the University website. Before Bounce came along, there was no shortage of people knowing about and attending events. 

It seems to me that the main draw of Bounce is to collect payments, and with very few paid events at BU, it seems to me that the app has very little purpose or necessity at our university. I was looking at the Bounce life website, and they advertise that they are present at multiple universities across Canada including UBC, Dalhousie, Queens, Western and of course Bishop’s. For large ticketed events at schools like UBC with almost 60,000 students on their Vancouver campus alone, I can see how Bounce could be very useful for organizations. But for a school like ours where the Fashion Show tickets can be sold in person in the sub, isn’t it better that we are able to buy a ticket from a person instead through an app that is taking a cut of the ticket sale? I think we are lucky to go to a school where a paid event is an anomaly, not the norm. The Fashion Show is a fundraiser; of course I want to buy a ticket! On the other hand, as co-lead of BU Outdoors, I am always trying to make sure that our club’s events are inclusive and as inexpensive as possible.

For a small BU Outdoors hike where I can personally reach out to every participant if I need to and where any money exchanged will be a $5 bill given to someone who volunteered to drive to the trailhead, I don’t see the point in Bounce being involved whatsoever. As the leader of a club, it was frustrating to be told to use Bounce when we already had organized systems in place that worked. Our system of using Google Forms worked better not only because we don’t need to collect payment, but also because we are able to collect all necessary information from participants in one place.

I’m not sure how Bounce ended up here, but I think they should bounce back to the big universities where their system works better.