Since its 2014 release, RIT’s student petition platform, PawPrints, has been no stranger to criticism and complaints. Many students find PawPrints ineffective, citing poor marketing and a dysfunctional website.

Evaluating PawPrints’ Effectiveness 

On Nov. 3, 2025, Josh Cohn, a fifth year Computing and Information Technologies student, published a petition titled “Actually Implement PawPrints,” which received 211 signatures before being closed. On Feb. 6, 2026, the PawPrint received a final response, which began “Hello everyone! Thank you for voicing your concerns on the implementation of PawPrints. In this academic year, SG has closed 38 PawPrints petitions and has updated any other petition that is currently open.”

Cohn was inspired to write the petition after noticing that several petitions had reached the 200-signature response threshold and received no substantive responses, only the typical update message sent when a PawPrint has been charged to a Student Government (SG) committee.

Committee meetings offer a time for students to share their support for different petitions. Often, relevant staff members are invited to these meetings as the university administration makes many of the final decisions.

SG strongly encourages students to attend their meetings in person, as committees can only succeed by working with professional staff, and high attendance demonstrates students care about an issue.

However, Cohn explained that he finds these responses unhelpful when many students are unable to attend meetings due to scheduling conflicts.

“We have to go to this meeting at this inopportune time in the middle of the day, when we are in class, to go and make a difference,” he said.

Garett Lester, an active member of the RIT Model Railroad Club (MRC) and the author of “Save the RIT Model Railroad Club!”, shared that he felt the meetings he and other MRC members attended didn’t prove to be very helpful.  He also added that “it felt like… the point of the committee was to close the petition as quickly as possible, not to resolve the issue that the petition was created to solve.”

While Lester’s PawPrint found relative success (MRC will be permitted to stay in their club space until a new space is identified), he attributes this more to the petition posted on Change.org and the support of the greater Rochester community.

Although most students do not explicitly feel negative toward the platform, many have expressed uncertainty about its effectiveness.

“I don’t think that they can resolve really big issues, but there’s no reason not to [sign PawPrints],” said second year Medical Illustration student, Dante Hansen.

Often, students attribute PawPrints’ perceived ineffectiveness to the university administration rather than SG members. “As much as I dislike how a lot of Student Government has gone about it, I think it starts with the higher-ups,” said Cohn.

John Schulz, a fourth year Computer Engineering Technology student, expressed surprise when informed that his PawPrint, “Reduce Price Hikes on Food,” had been closed. Schulz, an author of several PawPrints, noted that he finds it difficult to stay up to date on his PawPrints.

“I have not been receiving notifications for responses and for status updates,” he said.

As of this article’s publication, the PawPrints website still does not have a notification system.

Aside from a lack of website notifications, Cohn noted that he was not aware of PawPrints until his second year, and believes that a portion of the RIT community does not yet know about them.

“I would say in general that we could do a better job of marketing the website,” said Trishelle Hoopes, SG’s Director of Student Relations. She added that she plans to recommend a “larger event toward the beginning of the year” to increase awareness.

Website and User Experience 

Several students expressed dissatisfaction with the PawPrints website. The site’s reportedly persistent issues with key functions, such as finding and signing petitions, seemingly discourage student engagement.

First year Computer Science student Campbell Bagley, in response to a Reporter survey about PawPrints, expressed frustrations with the PawPrints UI.

“The new website has made actually browsing and navigating [for petitions] much more frustrating, and that has discouraged me from looking for PawPrints to sign,” Bagley stated.

Shaila Yadav Lapizco, a first year SOIS Chemical Engineering student, described a recurring problem with the site that prevents her from signing petitions.

Frustrating experiences with the website have dissuaded some students from revisiting. When paired with the site’s lack of notifications, this can aggravate students’ disillusionment about the process.

While a negative perception of PawPrints doesn’t appear to be unfounded, many criticisms raised could be addressed with simple changes. For example, SG may address some of the concerns raised by students like Cohn and Schulz by doing more marketing.

Hoopes encourages students to continue sharing their feedback. “We cannot hear your input unless you give it to us,” she said.