Beginning this semester, all registered student organizations must use a new app, Lounge, for their communication. 

Student organizations were informed that the app would be used campus-wide in fall 2025 after organizations tested it, Director of Student Life Tiffany Hach said in an email. During the President’s Summit on Jan. 27, a Lounge employee helped explain the app.

“It should be really simple, really streamlined,” said Dominic Konstam, the head of partnerships at Lounge. “You don’t need to go searching for documents all over the place. It should be a centralized place to do all of your event management, find organizations that you want to be a part of and also communicate on mobile.”

Each organization can make its own group within the larger Drake group on Lounge. Groups can use the app to communicate, register events, sign contracts and more.

Lynne Cornelius, the associate dean of students, brought the idea to use the app to Drake University after hearing a presentation at an Iowa State Fraternity and Sorority Life conference.

“Knowing historically that we needed some solution for our student organization and some of our administrative processes, I was like, this might be our solution,” Cornelius said. 

For Cornelius, the Lounge app met all of Drake’s needs at a reasonable price.

So far, getting all organizations on the app has been a little difficult, Hach said in an email. 

“As of right now, it has taken some prompting and prodding for students to build their events in Lounge, so it has been slow,” Hach said. “I’ve tried to make myself available for student leaders to come and talk to me if they have questions or concerns, and I’m leaving a lot of the programming and usage up to them.”

For the wider student body, organization leaders have told their members to join the app.

The Drake Outdoor Leadership Club has been one of the most active organizations on Lounge so far.

“DOLC tends to run a little differently than most clubs, so we have been working out how to use Lounge in a way that works for us,” DOLC President Natalie Pope said in an email. “For now, I am excited to have the chat available for questions and the announcement function so we can keep our members updated through multiple mediums.”

Pope said that DOLC is still trying to get the app figured out.

“​​So far, we have posted on Lounge for our events without any attendance cap while we figure out how we would handle waitlists, which are necessary for many of our events,” Pope said. “We will continue to mess around with it over the semester to see how we can use it.”

Hach is requiring all student organizations to start their own Lounge.

“I have made it clear that by fall 2026, if the event is not on Lounge, it is not happening,” Hach said.