Corner Post editorial —
Does CAFNR Week need to change?

by Matt Eisenbath, posted Sept. 29, 2011

The fall semester at Mizzou is upon us. New freshmen are getting acclimated to their new college, philanthropies are wide-spread and homecoming is right around the corner. Everyone is as busy as they have ever been and seem to be overwhelmed by stress. It seems like a perfect time to tell students that they have another event to worry about, right? Meet CAFNR Week, a weeklong competition among the organizations of the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources.

I do not want to seem like I think CAFNR Week is not a great event. The celebration shows pride in our college. The idea of a CAFNR Week is a fantastic one, but a few things need to be changed in order to get the true point of CAFNR Week across: promoting and explaining what CAFNR is really about. CeCe Leslie, head of student recruitment for CAFNR, explains her take on the situation.

“The College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources has such a proud history and a great story to tell,” Leslie said. “I don’t think CAFNR week in its present form truly expresses the breadth and depth of our majors and student body.”

Much of this blame cannot be put on the steering committee, but simply on the students themselves. The CAFNR Week steering committee tries year after year to get more students and organizations involved.

“CAFNR week could really be improved by expanding it to all parts of the college,” said Drew Dampf, CAFNR student and ambassador. “Each year the steering committee works hard to get all students involved, but students must take initiative and want to be involved for the week to improve.”

The main reason people like me are sometimes a little crabby about CAFNR Week is because we are already so busy with other events and organizations at this time of the year. Adding CAFNR Week creates more on the to-do list if you plan to win the competitive event. Most events during the week are judged by participation, so students in organizations are busy every night trying to help their group win.

“It may be best to move the week to later in the semester to allow clubs to get their membership established and have multiple meetings before taking on all the work that CAFNR Week brings,” Dampf said.

CAFNR Week is wonderful for our college and university, but under the current conditions of the event, students just get burned out. I feel that with a little tweaking, CAFNR Week can be improved greatly. Ally Bettels, a CAFNR Week director for 2011, thinks that although the event may need to be moved around and changed a little, the purpose of CAFNR Week should remain the same.

“I do feel that CAFNR Week could use a little bit of a revamping; however, I would really like to see several of our activities stay the way they are,” Bettels said. ”There are many key aspects to CAFNR Week such as education, agricultural literacy, professional development and the social aspect. When changing or re-evaluating CAFNR Week, I think it is very important that all of those aspects be incorporated.”

Something about CAFNR Week as it stands now just does not quite get the full point across. It lacks some element to truly be effective. I believe that the students and faculty will make the necessary adjustments to create a week that fully does our college justice.

“CAFNR week could and should be a dynamic production of educating our internal and external audiences about who we are and what we contribute to the University, Columbia and the State of Missouri,” Leslie said.

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