Northern Star Online: NIU Tube offers students a multimedia voice

Streaming video comes to the NIU Web site in the form of NIU Tube.

Unveiled in a ceremony Thursday at Neptune Central, NIU Tube will feature videos of students talking about “why they want to stay on campus,” said Dan Dowling, senior marketing major. Dowling was the marketing project assistant.

“It’s a media resource to show how students actually feel (about issues),” Dowling said.
NIU Tube will be streamed off the Housing and Dining Web site starting midnight Friday. Dowling said it is part of Housing and Dining’s retention plan.

“Housing and Dining advertise on campus, but we wanted to take it to a new level,” Dowling said.

NIU Tube will initially feature eight students talking about life on campus and its benefits.
“You don’t have to worry about random people wandering your halls,” Dawn Procopio, a sophomore political science major, said in her NIU Tube video.

Dowling expressed hope for the evolution of the project.

“We’re in baby steps right now, but we really want it to evolve,” Dowling said. In the future, he said that he would like to see students submit their own videos to NIU Tube.

“If we could showcase campus bands, that would be really sweet,” Dowling said.

However, Dowling admitted that Housing and Dining will have final say on what goes onto NIU Tube.

But Dowling did not work alone. Kellen Scott, senior studio art major, did the graphic design; senior journalism major Yvonne Pacula did web design; senior English major Lacey Frye wrote all of the scripts; and Miles Pfefferle, senior media studies major, was the photographer.

Freshman marketing major Ashley Schulter, another NIU Tube personality, said the Web service can do a lot for the campus.

“I think it gives kids an insight to what campus is,” Schulter said. “It makes it more personal.”