A new student-developed app designed to help students monitor community events could change the social landscape at the Claremont Colleges. The app, 5C Events, was launched on Oct. 25 via Fizz – the popular anonymous social media platform – with the post quickly amassing thousands of likes.
Three days later on Oct. 28, Daniel Xu CM ’28 and Aaron Zhang CM ’28, the app’s developers, started a 5C Events Instagram page, promoting the app and instructing users on how they could download it. Since then, the page has amassed over 900 followers, with posts showing off the app’s new features and polls allowing students to submit feedback.
Xu and Zhang have been hard at work publicizing the app and responding to this feedback. Zhang said that the two created the app after seeing a clear need for it within the community. Some of the pre-existing platforms, Xu said, are very cluttered and have a lot of unnecessary information.
“There are similar platforms like Cork [and] Engage and there are Instagram accounts like ASCMC and 5C Nightlife,” Xu said. “But all of these things are missing one factor or another.”
Xu added that on the other platforms, it can be challenging to edit event information. Often, creators have to make an entirely new post, and any older posts that were still up would have incorrect information.
Currently, the developers’ main goal is to increase 5C Events’ user base. To achieve this, they have attempted to promote the app through various social media platforms while also reaching out to student-led organizations and clubs to better integrate the app into student life.
Xu and Zhang also outlined some of their long-term goals with the app.
“I think a platform like this could be used at other schools to connect students with relevant events,” Zhang said.
He noted that the experiences students face at the 5Cs are not unique and that at larger campuses, it becomes even more necessary to organize events because of the limited communication across dorms and student groups.
According to Xu and Zhang, the release of 5C Events was a big step for them as they both went into creating it with relatively limited backgrounds in app development.
“Both of us don’t really have much coding experience but with the power of AI nowadays, you can basically make anything you want,” Xu said. “So our app was created almost entirely with the help of an AI app creator called Glide, except for some coding in the back end of our app.”
Xu strongly pushed for utilizing AI to build the platform. He explained that its usage was key in segments of the app’s creation that otherwise would have been very time-intensive, especially while balancing his school work, extracurriculars and social life.
While the features of the app are intentionally simplistic, Xu and Zhang add new tools daily as they receive user feedback.
“We’re trying to ensure that all the events across the 5Cs are in the app,” Zhang said. “And we filter through these by the school and also by parties, club events and career-focused events.”
Kabir Raina CM ’28 first heard about the 5C Events app on Fizz and checks it a few times a week to make sure that he has not missed out on any events. He is a regular user and has so far enjoyed his experience with the app.
“It’s really nice because previously, you would only hear about events through either the 5C Nightlife Instagram or emails and it could be difficult to keep track of everything so this kind of consolidates it all together in one place,” Raina said.
He added that he didn’t mind how things were before the app existed but that his life is now easier thanks to 5C Events. Overall, he said that he views it as beneficial to the 5C community.
“I think it’s definitely something that people can start using very regularly,” Raina said.
Xu and Zhang said they hope that their app will eventually become a cornerstone across the campuses and that a majority of students will actively rely on it in their day-to-day lives. They hope for it to be comparable to the popular 5C Menus app — an app that provides the daily menus of the 5C dining halls — which was also developed by 5C students several years ago.
“We want this app to be something that everyone says to new freshmen, like, ‘Oh, have you downloaded this yet,’” Xu said. “We also want this app to be a platform where all the clubs and organizations that make events on campus can go on and just sort of input their own events.”
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