You check the site everyday (okay, sometimes multiple times a day). It’s your go-to authority to discover upcoming events on campus or to see pictures from events you missed. Now during finals, it’s your procrastination godsend. Even if you’ve already read all of the articles, you can still spend hours in Bapst looking at the Campus Cuties! Yes, Her Campus BC is your new favorite website.
BC collegiettes™ (and a growing number of BC males) of every grade agree: Her Campus BC has become an important resource for life on the Heights. Where else would you know which food is the healthiest in the dining halls? How else would you finally learn the name of that guy dancing in the yellow suit at every football, basketball, and hockey game? Who else comforted you when you got Co Ro housing for next year? Where else could you find so many great pictures of the riot that took over campus?
We introduce you to campus celebrities every week, students doing incredible things for Boston College or the greater society, but it’s about time that you meet the girls responsible for it all: Kathryn Fox and Brittany Lewis.
Fox and Lewis in their freshman year at BC
They are Her Campus BC’s Campus Correspondents who brought this incredible resource to the Boston College community. They filled out applications, recruited writers, held meetings, and launched the BC branch. Every Sunday night, they hosted about twenty tired, sweatpants-clad girls (ahem, your Her Campus writers!) and fed them delicious baked goods to wake them from their homework coma. They ran these weekly meetings all semester, assigning articles and generating new article ideas.
Their email inboxes were flooded with pieces to be edited, formatted, and uploaded to the site. They then promoted these fantastic articles through Her Campus BC’s Twitter and Facebook. They planned, organized, and set up two amazing events this year – the Launch Party and the Bachelorette Party for Kate Middleton. They created a close community of girls who write for and market BC’s branch. They helped establish this voice and space for BC collegiettes™, which will only continue to grow and expand.
Lewis and Fox at the Her Campus BC Launch Party
Fox first heard about Her Campus through a friend whose own school, Mizzou, already launched their branch. Lewis heard about the national site’s launch, but wasn’t sure what it was about. Good friends (and roommates!) since freshman year, they attended a Harvard Women in Business event in October 2010, where they saw Her Campus representatives speak at panels for Publishing and Digital Media. The BC gals were extremely enticed, so Fox got one of the panelist’s business cards.
Her Campus intrigued Fox and Lewis because BC hadn’t had anything like this before, an online resource for girls on campus, which speaks to us and what we care about. And so they applied together to be Campus Correspondents to launch a branch for BC. While we were studying in O’Neill, they were submitting their resumes, writing samples, and question responses to Her Campus.
On November 7, 2010, they got the good news: BC was accepted and they were in charge of preparing the site for its launch next month! With little time but lots of excitement, Fox and Lewis distributed pink flyers for an informational meeting and e-mailed various different list servs, hoping to recruit writers. They had a great turnout at the first meeting; all of the girls were enthusiastic and submitted articles within the week.
The process of bringing HC to BC was a challenge. On top of jobs and homework, they had to teach themselves how to upload articles to the site (a process that they struggled with for hours). They also worked to recruit a solid staff of writers while continuing to publicize the site and its articles.
The site has been a success on campus since its very first week, which totaled more than 3,000 hits! Today, BC’s site receives an average of 2,000 hits per week and is consistently the most-read branch of the 126 branches. Not a week has gone by without totaling more than 1,000 hits, the highest being 5,000 visits in one week!
Despite HC BC’s unbelievable success and growth, managing the site was no easy task. Fox and Lewis certainly grew as leaders in the process of managing the staff and running the site. Between editing articles, publicizing site content, and organizing giveaways and events, being Campus Correspondents has taken over their lives.
Some of the HC BC staff!
Although they are sad to leave BC and Her Campus, Fox and Lewis are excited to pass the torch to Meg Keefe, Katie Moran, and Julianne Wojno next year. They hope Her Campus BC can be officially recognized by the University and will continue to grow. They would like the branch to continue developing into an important source for BC collegiette™ life, with content that girls care about and conversations that are important to us.
An International Studies major from Tulsa, OK, Kathryn Fox will be teaching middle school science through Teach for America after graduation. Brittany Lewis, an English major who always intended on a career in publishing, is the new Manager of Campus Development for the national Her Campus organization, located in Harvard Square.
We wish the girls a world of success after graduation and thank them for working tirelessly to bring this invaluable resource to our campus!