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Guidelines

Bates Now is a daily email which provides an aggregation of campus events and announcements that reduces the volume of emails faculty and staff receive. Any member of the campus community wishing to share information with all faculty and staff via Bates Now may submit an announcement via the submission form on the Quad. All submissions will be reviewed and, when approved, included as a link in an upcoming Bates Now. Bates Now is moderated by the Vice President of Academic Affairs and the Dean of the Faculty’s office. Posts suitable for inclusion in Bates Now are as follows:

Items not suitable for inclusion on Bates Now include, but are not limited to, the following:

Creating and Posting Announcements

Deadline: Announcements must be submitted by 4:00pm to be considered for the next day’s edition. Bates Now is not sent on Saturdays or Sundays or when Bates is closed.

Image Sizing: Images submitted with announcements should be formatted as a square, with recommended dimensions of 300 pixels by 300 pixels. Please do not include text in images.

Featured Announcements

Bates Now curators will evaluate announcements each day and identify those to mark as “Featured.” These decisions will be informed by a consideration of a range of factors, including whether the message:

In addition, a couple of other issues may be taken into consideration, including whether the message:

The vast majority of announcements selected to be featured are for those things occurring on the day of the mailing. Please note that there is a 2 feature maximum in each Bates Now mailing, per entity submitting (groups, departments, individuals, etc.). To ensure that specific announcements are selected, please be sure to indicate which announcements you would like featured and when they would be ideally featured in the “Note to Bates Now Manager” section as you create your announcement.

Scheduling and Promoting Events

The event listings in Bates Now will be drawn from the Event Management System (EMS) (events.bates.edu). When you reserve space in EMS, you will be asked, “Would you like this event included on the Quad website, the Bates Engage app, and considered for Bates Today/Bates Now?“ Indicating “YES” will submit your event for review and publication. Events geared only to students will not be posted on Bates Now. If your event is off-campus or not in a reservable space, you may use the Off-Campus/Non-Reservable form to create a listing for the event.

If you’d like to promote the event in advance of the event date, you should submit an announcement (see above). When submitting an announcement, you can specify an event or deadline date in order for the announcement to appear in the “reminders” section, above general announcements.

Other Considerations

When using Bates Now, be aware that information you share via this system could be publicly visible on the web. Proceed cautiously with announcement attachments.

If you would like to promote an event that includes a public screening of a movie or some other type of media, you must be in compliance with the college’s policy on Public Performance of Movies or Other Media. Please ensure you are in compliance before submitting an announcement to Bates Now about your event. Questions about the policy may be directed to the Copyright Officer.

If you are including photography or other imagery with your announcement, be sure you have permission to use that media. Images in the public domain can be found in the WikiMedia CommonsFlickr Commons, or in other web databases of public media.

Should you need to change information in your announcement after it has been submitted, contact the dean of Faculty’s Office at mmeserve@bates.edu.