Mike’s Article was featured in the February 7, 2010 edition of the Lansing State Journal. Get Article

Lansing is full of places to spend evenings and weekends. Unfortunately, many of the 40,000 students living in East Lansing remain entirely unaware of them.

Take, for example, Elderly Music on Washington, Silver Bells, or the romantic Emil’s restaurant on Michigan Avenue where you can dine where Al Capone once rested between Chicago-Lansing moonshine runs. These are the places where memories are made.

So why are the students of Michigan State University and Lansing Community College not infusing their free time, nightlife, and weekends with the electricity of what the capital city has to offer?

This problem of weak infusion between students and Lansing is already out in the open to many of the residents of the Lansing and greater-Lansing area. We see organizations like Capital City Connect and the Lansing city government sponsoring programs and competitions to promote activity. There is the Entrepreneurial Mentorship Program that connects enthusiastic students with a network of businesses of Lansing. There are idea competitions. This list runs on; however, these attempts fail to promote wide-ranged consumerism or activity.

Regardless, these are merely outside organizations attempting to do the advertising work that businesses should already be doing themselves.

This editorial goes out to the companies and organizations that feel their businesses are floundering or failing to pull in a healthy number of customers. Who couldn’t use a little more revenue?

It takes more than organizations like Lansing Connect to advertise all of the activities, events, festivals and businesses that the capital city has to offer. The professional organizations of Lansing and the greater-Lansing area must do more to involve the educated and enthusiastic populations of MSU, LCC and the rest of the youth in the Lansing area.

We crave nightlife. We crave a city. Show it to us.

Create internships programs to build the minds as well as résumés of these hardworking young adults in Michigan. Emphasize the importance of the volunteer opportunities and they will spread throughout the city. Involve Sparrow hospital and local health clinics to expose the hundreds of pre-med students to what the real world of their major has to offer. To the businesses and professional organizations of the capital area— it is up to you.

Small businesses may not be able to afford such programs, but larger business sectors and commissions in the area can begin the process and the trickling effect. Lansing has it all; we need to want people to see that.

Mike Tasse is a senior at Michigan State University and the Director of Operations and Finance for Spotlight Michigan, a student-run company that focuses on creating young, talented, and entrepreneurial communities for the new economy. For more articles like this one, visit www.spotlightmichigan.com