A Look into the Odyssey Executive Board Introduction The community that I decided to research is the executive board

of the Odyssey newspaper. This paper life by having an allfocuses on informing Greek, and non-Greek Universitys campus. I for the Odyssey as a board. My specific job community is to make are happy with their reflects of Purdue Greek Greek staff. The paper and entertaining other members of Purdue recently began to work member of the executive in this discourse sure that the customers adds that we put into our

paper every week and assist them to make adds that are geared towards the Greek community. I chose to study this community because since I recently joined it I had a relatively a non-bias view and I was interested to learn more about it. This is a discourse community for six main reasons. For one this community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals. Our goal as an executive board is to produce a well-rounded twenty-page paper every week and continue to have happy customers that give us their ads. We focus on getting everyone on the executive board involved with all the different branches of the board. We do this by keeping each other informed of our individual progress each week. This community also has many mechanisms of intercommunication among its members. We have a group me, which am an app where you can have large group

messages, where everyone on the executive board is able to be in constant contact with each other. We also have occasional meetings with the board to discuss what direction the paper is going and if there are any difficulties going on with anything involving our board. In addition to this the president of the Odyssey executive board along with the chief editor, who are both on the executive board, send us weekly updates in our group message of the previous weeks progress. We also communicate with the executive board of franchise of the Odyssey each week. They are based in Indianapolis and we each have one member of this board that we contact individually. These short meetings consist of catching each other up to speed on where they want our board to take the paper and the face of the Odyssey. Along with this we discuss the progress out campus paper is having. This community also has different genres. When we talk in our group message it is much different to when we have physical meetings and discuss our problems. We also have some words that are unique to our community. We say things that have to do with the paper and with Greek life that to anyone that has never been on a paper staff or Greek life would not understand. A few examples of this lexis are chapter, philanthropy, function, skip a mean, paper layout, customer ad designs, customer happiness, social media advertising, and board meeting. In addition to everyone on the executive board having to be in Greek life, we also have to be in undergraduate college. We also have to have a major that has to do with marketing, public relations, advertising, phycology, or business. As a student that is precom and I wish to go into either corporate communications or public relations. This discourse community is extremely important to me for many reasons one being that understanding this community will hugely help me in the future work force.

Methodology To begin my research for this community I conducted two interviews with the president of the executive board along with the editor and chief. These two people were fundamental to fully understanding the way that our group has grown and works. When I conducted my interviews I asked each of the people I chose to interview the same list of questions with only a few alterations. I did this because I was interested to see what their different perspectives were of the executive board. I conducted my interview with the president of the executive board at her Sorority house in a private room. I interviewed editor and chief at Lawson in a private room as well. I chose to interview the president and the editor and chief for a few reasons. For one they are both seniors here at Purdue and have almost four years of experience of being in this discourse community. They both have become very invested in this community and given it countless house of their time over the years. I believed them to be the most reliable and experienced members of our community. I also observed one of our meetings where we discussed our current direction we were trying to go and our goals as an executive board for this semester. I did this at Lawson in a large open room. I also observed our Group me in the Hicks underground library along with doing research on the online archives. Observing both the meeting and the Group me was a good way to see the difference in genre that our community has. Results History The Odyssey began to be an official Greek newspaper in 2009. It was originally founded in 2009 at Indiana University. The parent company is the Olympus Media Group

also founded in 2009. This is the executive board that every executive board is based off of on campuses countrywide. Our executive board communicates with the main executive community weekly to make sure that we are on track. This paper has rapidly spread to schools all over the country and is becoming a huge name at large campuses. Group Meeting Observation I observed my discourse community while we were having our monthly group meeting. This meeting typically covers the progress that each member of our executive board has made with the paper over the past month and any problems that have occurred. We had this meeting at Lawson in a large room with a tall celling. The meeting is at 8:00 at night so there are normally only a few people left studying in the main room at this point. People begin to trickle in pulling up the large chairs and stools that are scattered around the large open room. The members of the executive board begin to form a semi circle with the chairs that they collect from throughout the room. At this meeting everyone from the board was able to come which was rare. The meeting started a little late because there was one of the members that werent on time. We sat patiently and waited for about five minutes looking at each other impatiently until the president of the board, Paige, said to me, Will you text Rebecca and see if she is on her way? Yes of coarse! I quickly responded. I hurriedly put down my notebook and pen to grab my IPhone from my purse to text her. Before I could even get my phone out she bust in the door and with her a cold wind with snowflakes came with her. Sorry Im late! Rebecca exclaimed to the whole group but looking mainly at Paige.

No worried! said Paige, and with this the meeting began. In the beginning it was very formal and Paige just briefed us on what headquarters has been doing and the direction that they want us to go. So this week is the Valentines Day issue and we are working on getting the businesses whose ads are in our paper to change up their current adds to have a V Day theme. Ali and Rebecca, when you go to deliver the papers this week make sure to talk to the owners about this. Okay what if they arent in the store? asked Rebecca. Just e-mail them and if they dont answer then we will just not make any changes, replied Paige. Emily, the editor and chief said, Okay so we need to work on getting a lot more writers especially male writers! Ali and Rebecca since you two are a freshman and sophomore we need you guys to recruit new writers so that they will be here for a while. The small conversations continued for another fifteen minutes about customers who had been needy and annoying the week before. There were new proposals due from the sales reps, that was Rebecca and I, by the end of the week and this was a topic of conversation for a while. I dont see how they expect us to crank out ten fifteen page proposals by the end of the week! We have school this is not our job! Rebecca said with a sound of contempt in her voice. I know but this will really help us in the long run. If the customers are happy then they will keep paying us to put them in our paper and we can keep getting a better name on campus, stated Emily. With this the complaints from Rebecca and I about the

proposals were over. We would just have to suck it up and get them done. Rebecca gave me a sideward glance that said, This is bullshit. I tried to smile back to say it is what it is, and with this the meeting went on. The groups dynamic was interesting this week because it was the first time we had all met this semester. Some of us were catching up, others checking their phones constantly and looking bored. There was a general feeling of wanting the meeting to be over and Paige could sense this right when we ran out of things to talk about. Thanks for coming guys it was a good meeting! See yall next month! She beamed her huge smile at us as we all started bundling up in our coats, scarfs, and everything else that we had to keep us warm. As much you could tell everyone was ready to leave no one wanted to go outside. A few people looked to the left at the huge wall of glass windows to see what the weather looked like. The wind swirled the snow around in mini tornadoes and it looked cold as ever. As everyone finally was about to walk out the door Paige said, just check Group Me this week Ill keep everyone updated! With this everyone said their last goodbyes and with mixed emotion of wanting to leave and not wanting to be cold they walked out into the swirling winds of snow. Interview During my interview that I conducted on the president and editor and chief of the executive board I made a few general findings about this discourse community. They both had similar goals for this year, which goes along that our community shares the same goals and values. They both said that for our sales team, which is a part of the executive board, our goal is to reach $100,000 in total revenue by the end of the school year. When I asked Paige, the president of our community, about communication she had

a very helpful answer that helped me understand fully how we communicate. She said, Our group communicates through a couple different mediums. First off, we have a Group Me messaging group for the executive board where we can all simultaneously message each other about important deadlines and meeting times. I find this effective, since we are a newspaper and a newspaper is full of several deadline it is easy to send a quick text and get an equally quick response. But overall, I think our best way to communicate is with our weekly meetings where we all sit down and discuss things that are going on with the paper. We are able to talk about lengthy things that we otherwise wouldn't be able to talk about though our Group Me. When I asked Emily, the editor and chief, about how she defines the writing in paper she said, The paper is all about having individual writers show their voice in their articles. We all have being Greek in common, but never is one article the same. We write the things that Greeks want to read about and need to know. When I asked her what the best way to communicate in the group is she told me that it is our Group me due to the face that it notifies you on your phone instead of being just another mass email that is a pain to read. I also asked her what some of the main problems we as an executive board have faced over the years she has been a member and her answer was very helpful to understand the community more. She told me that, In regards to problems communication, I think that a lot of the problems have been between our own team at Purdue with the headquarters in Indy. Its hard to have them understand whats going on here when they arent a part of the Greek culture here. One of the most important answers from these two interviews was a story that Paige told me about a problem she had encountered in this group. One of the first

problems I encountered with this was when I first became the president of the executive board it was difficult for everyone to get on board with what I wanted to happen with the group. I came in guns blazing with all my new ideas and I honestly think that I scared a few people away. Once I realized that we needed to slowly grow as a team things began to run like a well oiled machine. Group Message Observation

These are all examples of different things that we talk about in our Group messages. On the one on the farthest to the left we are planning a meeting via group text. In the middle portion we are discussing a problem that went on with an article in the paper being too racy. In these messages it is an example of when the highest and lowest levels of expertise in the community communicate as equals. In this case its Paige, who is the president, and Rebecca, who is a sales consultant. On the message on the far right we are sharing important information that the group needed to know.

Discussion While observing and doing my interviews on my discourse community I found that there are two different sides to this group. One side is the business side that I saw while doing my observation on the monthly formal meeting. The group started off with strictly business but while the meeting went on everyone became less worried about the business side and began having small conversations about personal lives. The other side that I saw while observing was the funny side where everyone in the group cracks jokes and sometimes even gets a little upset. I saw this while observing our Group Messages. In these the members say what ever is on their minds. It also really helps our community to stay connected over the time that we do not meet in person. One pattern that I found in my community was that we are constantly in touch via Group message. Not a single day goes by that there arent multiple messages involving things from cooperate wanting us to try something new to their house having a philanthropy event and asking us to come support it. The president and other members of the executive board that are higher up than some all communicate in the same way that we do. For example, when we recently talked in our Group me about the negative social media about a certain article that was published in the last paper there was back and forth conversation about what to do about it between the president and a sales rep. While the president has more experience and knowledge than a sales rep they talked back and forth both listening to each other ideas. I found it to be very interesting that the leader of the executive board communicated in the meetings and in the Group messages in the same ways that someone who was new communicated in them. Granted the president talks more in both and had more informative due to their vast knowledge about this

community, but I still found it interesting that there was nothing that they did that made anyone feel below them. Conclusion After all of my research and findings throughout this project I have a new understanding of this discourse community. I have realized that all the members need to work together and listen to each other to function well. The group had many different ways of communicating and keeping in touch that helps them all stay connected. This is a group that I will only belong in for my next few years as an undergraduate student but the things that I learn and experience in it will always be with me. This community will teach me many things that will help me with my future and now that I fully understand how the group works I have a higher appreciation for it and its members.