Bridget Draft

A Behind the Scenes Look at Arcadia’s Clubs

There are over 60 recognized clubs on campus, all of which are student run. Because they’re student run, and by undergrads no less, they must balance all the demands of school alongside their board member duties. 

While running a club might be fulfilling, especially if the space it provides is crucial to you and others, it can certainly be stressful. Some of the requirements to be a club include mandatory attendance of two AU Lead events, which are Arcadia’s leadership development events, at least one cultural diversity program, participation in both activities fairs and family weekend, as well as at least one service related experience. Additionally, one officer must attend all student government senate meetings, which are biweekly. Not only are all of these things time consuming, they can be difficult to do when everyone in the club has conflicting schedules. 

But that’s not all. In order to officially even be considered a club you must have six members, eight if you ever want to receive funding from Student Government. The president of the Self Defense Club confided in me that they “officially” had eight members when she first founded the club, but until they had existed for at least a semester, they really only had five. 

With one of the biggest issues surrounding the clubs being attendance, this can be difficult to maintain. What often happens is that students will sign up for a ton of clubs at the beginning of the semester, far too many to attend all of them, then as the semester goes on they stop coming. 

This was the case with the YDSA, or Young Democratic Socialists of America, one of Arcadia’s political activism clubs. At the Fall activities fair in 2018, they had 45 new people sign up to join the club. By the end of the semester, only 5-8 people were showing up at each meeting on average. 

Of all the club leaders I spoke to, there was a common thread of difficulties that come with being a board member and a full time student. Everyone talked about the stress of trying to juggle both school work and club responsibilities. 

For two of those club leaders, not only are they on the board, they also had a hand in creating the club, so they each gave me insight into how that went. Both Jordan Beck, co-chair of YDSA, and Gabriella Gulla, president of Self Defense, were founding members of their clubs; both told me of the exhausting process you have to go through to get registered. YDSA essentially had to go through it twice as their proposal was rejected the first time by the SGO committee you have to present to. Gabby told me they struggled a bit because of the physical nature of their club and the potential liability issues. In both cases, they said it was more frustrating than it should have to be. This process alone might discourage students from starting a new club of their own.

All of this is not even mentioning the paperwork. There are a plethora of forms that need to be filled out for a club to do anything. For example, say a club wants to do an event, perhaps like PRIDE clubs annual Pride Prom, here are a couple of the forms they would need to fill out:

If they go to one of the AU Lead workshops, two of which they are required to attend per semester, they have to fill out this form:

Even if they don't hold any events or attend any workshops, they still have to fill out the Monthly Student Organization Report.

If any of these forms are forgotten, especially the event forms, it might affect the ability of that club to get funding the following semester.

For many students who juggle school, work, or other extracurriculars this can be difficult to maintain. This is doubly hard for commuter students when everything happens on campus. This makes it hard to attend their own club meetings, let alone the required board meetings. This made me ask, why does Arcadia have these requirements? I got in contact with Heather Horowitz, director at Arcadia and liaison to student organizations, to ask about this. 

According to her, it’s about community. Arcadia’s Student Organization Handbook says, “Student organizations at Arcadia serve as the backbone of many campus traditions and are an integral and vibrant component of the student experience.” Requiring clubs to interact with the campus is supposed to foster great bonds with the school and give back to the community. The only issue is, when students stress over and dread making it to these meetings or events, the club can suffer and the students may feel alienated from the school instead of closer to it.

Whether or not the standards that are in place for Arcadia clubs work or not, there is always room for improvement. Those working in Student Programming are open to hearing suggestions, but it's no guarantee that things would change. Club leaders at Arcadia are the unsung heroes of this campus. They’re the ones hard at work, organizing events and attending meetings, none of which they have to do, just to provide those spaces to students. Without them, there wouldn't be much of a community at all, so why make it hard for them to function?