The release of Wesleyan’s new website design has caused quite an uproar: it was hard to walk around campus over the past week without hearing or participating in some conversation about how poorly the questions on the admissions section of the website reflected on the personalities and perspectives of Wesleyan students.

Even though the questions on the website fail to accurately convey the personality of the student body, at least the administration tried to cooperate with students by holding focus groups. When students were aggravated by the lack of a link to the library on the main page, the website was modified to address this concern. In fact, there will be time for many similar usability improvements: the new website design is being rolled out over a period of 12-18 months so that there will be more opportunities for the student body and faculty to suggest changes.

Of course, the most important change on the website will involve deciding the fate of the questions on the admissions section of the website. Instead of posting Facebook status updates, typing complaints on the ACB, or continuing to recycle jokes about Homer Simpson and staying up late to make friends for life, let’s take a more constructive approach to improving the way the University markets Wesleyan’s image.

We need to work with the administration to figure out how to rewrite the questions to better reflect the character of the student body. Then again, maybe the website does not need questions at all, and the attempt to define Wesleyan through questions is antithetical to Wesleyan’s mission: refusing to constrict students’ identities to particular traits and stereotypes. Whatever the solution, let’s seize the opportunity to discuss with the administration how to portray Wesleyan more accurately to prospective students.