 <p>Are you getting no errors at all from the Javascript console you're using? I'd say adding parentheses should do the trick:</p> <pre><code>$$('.student-link').invoke('observe','click',draw_report()); $$('.student-link').invoke('observe','click',set_active()); </code></pre> <p><strong>EDIT</strong>: I see you use a jQuery tag in your original question. Are you sure you're using jQuery? Because the javascript code above looks suspiciously like Prototype.</p>