So you were walking around the Activities Fair last week, flipping through the Polytechnic Club Directory, or browsing the Union website, and you discovered that your favorite activity from high school is not offered at RPI. Maybe you were talking to a friend at another campus and heard about an activity that he or she is involved in and you want to bring it here. There are a multitude of situations in which you could decide to form a new club on campus and you are now lost on what to do next.
The Union, the student-run body that governs student activities on campus, has a specific set of procedures that students will have to go through before forming a new club, especially one that requires funding. The task can be daunting at times, but has been recently streamlined to prevent students from losing interest in their idea.
“The one thing I don’t want to do is have students come up with an idea they’re passionate about and lose that passion because of the bureaucracy,” said President of the Union Peter Baldwin ’06.
The first step the Union suggests is stopping by the Administration Office on the third floor of the Union. They will be able to tell you if a club that suits your interest already exists, or if there is one with similar interests that you could work with. After that, advertise for and hold an organizational meeting to see if there are other students on campus who would like to participate. Toward that end, the Admin Office will provide you with 40 free photocopies for flyers.
Once you have located roughly 20 students, including two or three others who will serve as the core during the approval process, the next step is putting together a club purpose statement and submitting it to the Constitutional Committee through the Admin Office, or by contacting the chair of the committee, Kerrissa Lynch, at lynchk@rpi.edu. The purpose statement is pretty self-explanatory: it is nothing more than a statement of the goals the club intends to achieve through its activities. It could also include, though, an example of the types of activities the club would be involved in or a description of how the club will benefit RPI and the student body.
You will also need to put together a starter constitution, which will govern the club’s activities until a permanent constitution is in place. Both of these documents will be approved at the same time.
Then comes what may be the easiest part of the entire process: actually having your club approved by the Executive Board. The E-Board consists of 12 students from all class years, and will evaluate what you have submitted to that point. Baldwin said that compared to that of other schools without student-run unions, RPI’s approval process is quite simple: “You just have to convince a group of 12 students that it’s not offered on campus and that there’s student interest. After that, you can get going right away.”
If the E-Board approves your club and you are seeking money from the Union to support your activities, you will only be eligible for $125 at that time, but you can work with your E-Board representative to put together a budget to submit for consideration.
After approval from the E-Board, the process winds down. You will need to put together a permanent constitution for the club since the starter constitution will expire in 36 months, but you have some time to work on that. Once you put it together, the Constitutional Committee may send it back with some suggestions, but eventually it will be sent to the E-Board for final approval, and then the process is over.
The process may sound difficult and time-consuming, and it can be, but of late all parties involved have been striving to simplify it. Just a short time ago, it took a full year to bring a club to the point where it could host Union-recognized activities. Now, under the new process, it can take three to four weeks, and the process continues to be streamlined.
Above all, everyone involved in the process urges students to pursue involving themselves in something they enjoy and to avoid being discouraged by the whole experience.
“There are a lot of opportunities available at RPI, and if you don’t find something that interests you, stop by and we’ll see what we can do,” said Beth Guikema, assistant activities coordinator for the Union.
“We’ll welcome anyone to come and talk to us,” she said, but asked that students “please be patient because it does take time.”
