Each Chico State graduating class has its own page on Facebook so students can stay connected with each other. The pages have become an online marketplace where students can sell books, find roommates and pawn off furniture.
The Chico State Class of 2017 page, containing 2,073 members, has 167 posts for the month of August. These posts are dedicated to selling books, finding roommates or placing miscellaneous ads. Miscellaneous ads include students offering rides to Chico, internships, outdoor activity groups or student-run businesses.
Of those 167 posts in August, 53.89 percent were focused on selling books. This includes Marion McClelland, a sophomore psychology major.
“I chose to sell my books on the Class of 2017 Facebook page because there are a lot of people that are on the page and get the notifications of posts,” McClelland said. “So far I haven’t gotten any responses on my post.”
9.58 percent of the August posts on the 2017 class page were posts dedicated to finding roommates for students in apartments or houses.
Lindsey Brock, sophomore nutrition major, talks about why she chose to look for another roommate on Facebook.
“My two other roommates go to Butte and thought it would be safer to find a roommate on the Chico State Facebook page than Craigslist,” Brock said. “I normally wouldn’t do that, but my one roommate is a guy and wanted another guy roommate, but didn’t know of anyone so asked me to post on the page.”
Brock talks about the possibility of not knowing her future roommate beforehand and the potential issues it may cause.
“We figured we would have better luck with finding someone we knew on the Chico State page,” Brock said. “We were concerned with them maybe not being close enough in age or having different priorities than us.”
Of the 167 posts, 30.54% were for miscellaneous items or events. An example of this would be a post regarding getting a ride to Chico from Southern California, trying to sell furniture or trying to find an item lost over the weekend.
Kendall Reynolds, a sophomore journalism major, lost her student ID card and talks about trying to use the class page to find it.
“Unfortunately, I did not receive any responses about my ID and resorted to getting a replacement at Student Services today,” Reynolds said.
Reynolds discusses why Facebook is a great resource for Chico State students.
“I chose to try Facebook because it’s a great way to reach a vast amount of people with one post,” Reynolds said. “It also seems that people are supportive of other classmates so when you post in your Chico class page, people want to help you out.”
Taylor Sinclair can be reached at [email protected] or @taysinclair17 on Twitter.
