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.

Posts suitable for inclusion in Bates Now are:

• General Announcements relevant to employees, including retired faculty and staff.
• Events (speakers, programs, performances, and similar) occurring at Bates College for the Bates College Community. 
• Events occurring nearby Bates where the event features a Bates faculty or staff member as a Bates representative, or where the performance pertains to their Bates professional development.

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

• Announcements of local events of note that do not have a Bates faculty or staff member as a Bates representative, or where the performance does not pertain to their Bates professional development. These events may be advertised on ForSale.
• Announcements for third-party fundraisers. These may be advertised on ForSale. While fundraisers may sometimes have a Bates tie-in, only college-sponsored third-party fundraising will be considered for Bates Now (including the annual Community Campaign and through employee enrichment).
• Political campaign activity and messages that favor or oppose candidates with or without stating their names.

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 days 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.

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 Commons, Flickr 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.