Hello,
I've been here for a a little while, but hadn't jumped through all the hoops to post these ideas before... Now that I have, I have a few things I just wanted to put out there to hopefully help RP within this sim specifically (not CD as a whole). These are both from my experience and based on being on basically all day in the sim for the last couple weeks.
Student Groups:
Some student groups would be really nice to bring more students to campus on a regular basis. YES does this pretty well, but that is one group.
Some new groups would be useful in providing a broader interest. In particular a student news paper would be great for reporting events like last nights gunfight in the library and can use media like tweeter to be timely. The photography club already listed here is another step. These sorts of clubs take some of the weight off the professors to create RP content.
The cheerleaders do this as well... I guess...? The the only cheerleaders I see regularly are part of YES.
Classes:
First off... I'd like to suggest some ideas to teachers (as I was a teacher for an academy myself in another sim). Suggest rp homework, such as providing an IC project between classes to get people to do things like going to the library for RP or even working together in small groups. When I say this I don't mean make them do physical homework, that's not why we come to RP sims.
Whenever my alt finally gets her invite to the CU group I'll have her join up and start teaching photography classes once per week. This may go well with the idea of a photography club as well (and it's something I've taught in RL).
In sim RP:
I'm setting up a martial arts dojo with the help of some other people (expect Esmeralda to post that up here once the build is done). It will be in Black Bottom and should give interesting RP opportunities related to self-defense training.
Some more small businesses in the area could be useful as well. Right now Valmont Entertainment is the most active such group. We have a scattering of eateries and similar spread around, but I rarely actually see anyone using them. I've run a diner in a SL RP sim before, running such a place requires a lot of effort to convince people to be there and make use of them... If these places don't have anyone actively in them is it possible to free them up for someone who is interested...?