St. Thomas Campus Ministry launched a YouTube series so that the answers to students’ questions about life, God or the Catholic church could be just a click away.

The Rev. Erich Rutten said Campus Ministry is doing its best to reach out to students through social media such as electronic newsletters, Facebook posts and now, a video series named “Ask Campus Ministry.”

The series will feature St. Thomas faculty members responding to questions in short videos starting after spring break.

“We’re really trying to get up to speed on a lot of these things,” Rutten said. “We’ve been working all year on how to have a greater communication or visibility on campus.”

Friar Patrick Tobin kicked off the first “Ask Campus Ministry” video March 8. Campus Ministry’s Retreat and Communications Coordinator Vanessa Walsh and sophomore Austin Riordan said they hope to release their first video in response to a student’s question after spring break.

“The overall objective is to just engage people to start a conversation about faith in their own lives and on campus and what it all means,” Rutten said. “We want it to be accessible and as much student dialog and conversation the better.”

Rutten said he liked the idea of creating short Campus Ministry videos, but it was Walsh who came up with the “Ask Campus Ministry” series and promotion on Facebook.

“I realized that on Facebook, the posts that are most clicked upon are photos and videos,” Walsh said. “I decided instead of sharing other people’s videos, we should start our own videos.”

Walsh said uploading videos to YouTube is a good route to take because it’s a familiar process. Campus Ministry hired Riordan to head up the video project.

“Primarily Austin (is working on the videos), and then he is coordinating with different people within Campus Ministry,” Walsh said. “He’s really the one that’s doing it all. I am supervising him, so we bounce ideas off of each other.”

Because of his creativity and previous experience, Walsh said Riordan is a good fit for the job.

“Of the people that applied, I was most impressed with the work he had already done,” Walsh said. “He already had a YouTube channel personally and looking at his work, I knew that he would be creative and produce good work for us.”

Freshman Sami Bordeau said she prefers a more traditional way of asking questions because that intimate of a connection shouldn’t be conducted through the Internet, no matter how convenient it is.

“I think it’s completely acceptable to have something like this ‘Ask Campus Ministry’ idea, but I don’t like how the questions are answered over YouTube,” Bordeau said. “Catholicism is a very traditional system, and I think using videos and not personal interactions defeats the purpose of students reaching out to priests.”

Rutten said creating YouTube videos is a good way to reach out to students in today’s world.

“I’ve seen samples from other Campus Ministries and other organizations that do these short videos, and I just think that that works for today’s culture,” Rutten said.

Sophomore Emily Casey likes the idea of anonymously submitting questions to Campus Ministry.

“ I feel that it is a good way to reach out to students especially in this day and age where technology is so prevalent,” Casey said. “I also think it allows for students who have questions about the Church as well as God and faith in general to ask them in a non-threatening manner.”

Walsh said Campus Ministry plans to post an “Ask Campus Ministry” video every two weeks, but it is dependent on the volume of questions they receive.

“We are asking people to send us questions three ways: through our Facebook group, commenting on the videos or sending us an email,” Walsh said. “We get those questions and compile them. Then, we’ll decide which questions we’ll answer.”

The team will only choose one question to answer bi-weekly, so Walsh said they are selective.

“We want a question we are able to answer and able to answer well,” Walsh said. “There may be some questions that are too broad of a scope for us, but if it’s something we are able to answer in a two minute video and we have someone on our staff that can answer it.”

Rutten agreed that short videos are ideal.

“People don’t have time to watch an hour long educational video, but if we could give them five minutes, they might check it out,” Rutten said.

Riordan said the videos are not only geared toward students, but also generated by them.

“We want this all to be student-driven. We’re not planning on coming up with our own questions,” Riordan said.

Stephanie Dodd can be reached at dodd0474@stthomas.edu.