Cal Poly has 277 chartered, active clubs on campus, but what does it take to start a club, and how difficult is it to gather members?
For students looking to start a club, the process is a little more work than some might originally think. Michelle Crawford, the program coordinator for Associated Students Inc., said students cannot just start a club from their brainchild. Rather, prospective club leaders must fill out paperwork and create bylaws in order to be recognized by the university.
“A lot of clubs think we can just say ‘We want to become a club and (then) become a club,’” Crawford said. “But there is some work that needs to be done just to ensure that all clubs that are using the Cal Poly name are doing so in the correct manner and have the correct protocol set up.”
To start a club, students must first research if similar clubs exist and find eight interested students willing to join, Crawford said. New clubs must also have a Cal Poly adviser. When these have been acquired, the new clubs must then complete a petition for recognition and create bylaws.
Also, club officers must have a 2.0 grade point average which must be checked. After that, the paperwork is processed through both ASI and Student Life and Leadership. Crawford said ASI acts as a conduit for the paperwork between Student Life and Leadership, but clubs are not associated with ASI.
“An important component to note is that cubs on campus are not ASI clubs,” Crawford said. “They are actually fully overseen through the state through Student Life and Leadership. All recognition is actually done on behalf of clubs by Student Life and Leadership.”
Crawford also said the process can get lengthy if students are not proactive about filling out the paperwork.
“If a club is really on it and Student Life is able to check grade point average and confirm the adviser’s employment with the state, it could take a week and a half to two weeks,” Crawford said.
Civil engineering junior Ariana Jarrell is president of the newly chartered Society for Advancement of Materials and Processing Engineering (SAMPE) club, and said it took her and her club officers all of last fall quarter to get the paperwork done and was only recently chartered in January.
“It took us a while to get everyone’s signatures, get the bylaws passed, and taking a club that was inactive for so long and making it active,” Jarrell said. “It was time consuming because I was doing it with all my other classes. If I had midterms, I had to be like, ‘Okay, I have to wait and do this Friday.’”
After the paperwork is processed, club officers — including the president, vice president, treasurer, secretary and adviser — must sign a charter in order to be recognized. Then the officers must complete online training.
SAMPE was originally an active club in the ’90s that Jarrell, along with her officers and adviser recently re-chartered.
Crawford said ASI keeps all clubs on file, even ones that have not been active since the ’70s, so if students have a similar idea, it saves them a step.
“Let’s say a club was active around the ’80s, and then all the officers graduated and the club laid dormant for a while,” Crawford said. “And then in the ’90s, all of a sudden there are eight students who are interested. They can come in, and we can actually pull the bylaws for them. If that is the same philosophy and mission they would like to carry on, then they can actually pick up where that club left off, and they don’t have to do this process.”
Sam Cates, a business administration sophomore and president of the Cal Poly Motor Car Association (MCA), said he and vice president and dairy science sophomore Alex Mandrusiak, came up with the club, which was chartered in November.
“Last year, my roommate, Alex, who is now my vice president, (and I) would take drives together all over San Luis Obispo,” Cates said. “There’s lots of pretty roads to drive on and we figured there must be other students at Cal Poly who enjoy driving and, you know, buying cars. Or just are into cars, are just car enthusiasts.”
Cates said the staff of ASI and Student Life and Leadership helped extensively with the chartering of his club and felt they helped make his vision a reality. Crawford said club services wants to help new clubs flourish on campus.
“We have staff that are trained and dedicated to helping them through the process, and so if they’re ever in question about what is going on, come sit down and talk to us,” Crawford said. “If we need to sit down with them for an hour, we’ll sit down with them for an hour to make sure there’s no confusion because I think the most frustrating thing is for a club to get started on a process to find out that they’ve gone down the wrong path.”
For new clubs, the paperwork is not the only problem; they must also gain members. Jarrell said her club was able to get members because of her adviser, Eltahry Elghandour, who is an engineering lecturer. He invited students from his classes to the club, which aims to compete in the bridge building competition at the SAMPE conference in Long Beach this May.
“First I thought it would be hard to get members, but Dr. Elghandor (is) a teacher and he sees so many students per day, so he has a lot of students he keeps in contact with,” Jarrell said. “And he recommended, ‘Hey, you should join this club.’ And right now I have roughly 12 members.” Jarrell said gaining funding has also been a problem with her club.
Cates said with advertising and some events — including the viewing of an Arizona car show and the visit from Robert Dunn, a retired vice president of Volkswagen America — his club has garnered interest, but he aims to win over more car enthusiasts.
“There’s a huge market here for a car club,” Cates said. “It’s just people need to know who we are. You just take a stroll through Poly Canyon garage or Cerro Vista parking lot, and you kind of know the car enthusiasts: nice BMWs and Mercedes and things like that.”
Crawford said some clubs just have fewer members than others and require perseverance to be successful.
“A lot of times we find groups that are socially based, so they have already built that in, so they start having club meetings and their membership grows quickly,” she said. “Some clubs can be in existence for years and always keep a membership of 10 or 20 people. Then, we have clubs with 500 members.”
With business cards, a Facebook and a website, Cates’ car club shows perseverance. Cates said he hopes to have memorabilia soon, including t-shirts, license plate frames and stickers.
Jarrell said she has not yet decided when general meetings will be and has only a Facebook group for her club. She also said she has yet to find a secretary.
“I’ve had a hard time finding a secretary, I think because there are a lot of boys in engineering and they feel like a secretary is a girl’s job,” Jarrell said.
Crawford said new clubs like Jarrell’s and Cates’ should put themselves out there in order to get the new member diversity they hope for.
“I think that people will go on the ASI website and will look at the club directory and look up clubs,” she said. “But for them to want to participate we always encourage clubs put yourselves out there, make flyers, post on facebook, do whatever you can so people can learn about you.”