Gin System

Just this year I was exposed to the Gin system by my sorority chapter president. She asked me to help implement the use of the Gin system within our chapter for the fall semester. This meant that I would have to learn the ins and outs of the system. At first, I was hesitant to take on this project, because I do not consider myself to be very computer savvy. However, after created my own username and logged on, I realized that this may not be as be as bad as I had expected.

The whole point of the Gin system is to stop the unnecessary house emails that are sent out very frequently. A lot of the announcements are not applicable to the entire chapter, which makes receiving 14 emails that have nothing to do with you quite annoying. Other chapters on Purdue's campus have begun to implement the use of the Gin in their chapters and I have heard nothing but positive feedback.

For new users, the Gin offers a number of tutorials to familiarize chapter members. Also, it is conveniently enough available through a Facebook application. Because everyone in our chapter uses Facebook (some probably more frequently than e-mail), they can sign onto the Gin system without going to the web site address.

The Gin system is split up into different boxes on the main screen: Announcements, Upcoming Events, New Files, Upcoming Birthdays and Discussion Board. The Announcements tab is provided by Nationals. They post information (and regularly update it) to inform various chapters of what is going on at a national level. Our chapter posts our "paper chapter" and other applications that chapter members may be interested in under the New Files tab. Upcoming birthdays lists all of the birthdays per each month. The Discussion Board tab is the most used among our chapter. Here, anyone can submit a post. Also, people can leave comments. This solves the problem of sending an entire house email out to every member.

Overall, this new technology has been so useful to our chapter. It is a great way to keep organized and provide all our information in one spot. I give it an A!