I can echo the frustrations expressed about social media becoming a necessity as it becomes the primary channel for communication by an institution. Both my university and student dorm use exclusively Discord to communicate events, exams, and general announcements. I don’t run Discord on my phone and due to this I have come close to missing several important things, if not for a friend letting me know. I’m not sure what if anything could be done to change this…
This is a good option for most of it, as the bridges seem quite solid. Sadly it won’t make up for calls (some courses have extra content in the form of “Discord Stages” which is like a big video call).