What's happening?

A Pow-wow? A fierce drag show? An intense bratwurst eating contest? A lot of students never hear about random events on campus, especially ones who live off-campus.

According to Campus Living, 74 percent of enrolled ECU students live off-campus. Bulletin boards are typically overloaded since no one cares to look at them unless there is absolutely nothing else to do while you're waiting to get into your classroom.

According to William's "Non-Designer's Design Book," "Flyers are great fun to create because you can safely abandon restraint! This is a great place to go wild and really call attention."

I'm not attacking all the flyers around, but some just don't stand out. There's usually one snazzy flyer in the company of extremely bland ones. The bulletin boards usually look overwhelming, especially that creepy tiki-like post outside of Mendenhall.

A lot of things are poorly advertised on flyers, so isn't that a waste of paper? Isn't ECU supposed to be going green? So maybe I'm being a little dramatic or bitter that I never got to see Matt Roloff from one of my guilty pleasure shows, "Little People Big World," speak on campus since I heard about it too late. I'm not saying there needs to be a "Salute Your Shorts" trumpet sounding off whenever an event is going on, but maybe some other steps need to be taken to let people know what's happening around campus.

A couple of days ago, a friend of mine told me about an interesting upcoming event. The Trash Cinema and Taste class is hosting a screening of Tommy Wiseau's cult film "The Room" in the Mendenhall Great Rooms on Nov. 18 at 9 p.m.

What? I immediately IMDB-ed it and became intrigued. Apparently, it will be similar to ECU's annual presentation of the "Rocky Horror Picture Show" where there will be props and an interactive viewing experience. The film was intended to be serious but it's so ridiculous that no one actually watches it for its original purpose. I know I had a good time throwing toast while watching the "Rocky Horror Picture Show" on campus, so I immediately told her that I wanted to come.

If she hadn't told me about it, I wouldn't have had a clue. It might have even turned into to another I-heard-about-it-too late event.

Sometimes, word of mouth type of invites can get a little mixed up. Yes, I just insulted some flyers but what about another advertising avenue?

Everyone and their mother has Facebook, so why shouldn't it have some advertising purpose? The ECU Zombie game has 1,038 members in the group, which was all done through Facebook.

Mass e-mails are also effective. Even though no one wants to admit it, most people read them. For example, the SGA e-mail about ESPN covering the VT game was attention grabbing, so many people read it. However, if e-mails are not interesting, they immediately get deleted without a glance.

So when it comes time to advertise an event, you have got to think "outside of the box" and avoid bland flyers or else no one is going to give your event the time of day.

This writer can be contacted at opinion@theeastcarolinian.com.