A recent change in the NC State University club policies dictates all campus organizations must now have at least six members, four of which must be officers, to become an official student organization.
Before the change, it required every organization to have at least four members.
Eileen Coombes, the director of Student Involvement, said changing the member requirement stemmed from the tendency for smaller organizations to disappear from the university after the most active members graduated.
“If smaller organizations had two more members that were younger or new, they could be later officers and help the organization continue and grow in the future,” Coombes said.
About 20 campus organizations had to adjust to this new policy. Actively Moving Forward, a support group for students who are going through loss, is currently working on growing its membership to fit the new club policies.
William Appleyard, president of Actively Moving Forward and a junior in biological sciences, said he is very concerned about the new changes in policies.
“Because of the needs of our group makes our organization very small, it is very hard to market sometimes,” Appleyard said. “We have been trying to talk to people one-on-one and going to club fairs.”
In some instances, national and international headquarters govern clubs and organizations through independent sets of rules.
“As long as they are in compliance with those rules, we will work with them,” Coombes said.
Student Involvement is also working with clubs to increase membership, and it is currently in the process of developing an evolvement support intern team, which will consist of undergraduate students working and consulting one-on-one with student organization leaders about recruitment and other tasks.
“We recognize that not all student organizations can recruit effectively,” Coombes said.
Coombes said Student Involvement has been working on developing small recruitment workshops and providing more online resources, such as its handbook or online training modules, for students to use for learning recruitment techniques.
In addition to the member policy, Student Involvement has reformatted its website to allow some academic advisors to monitor which organizations their students are involved with.
“This system allows us to connect other systems across campus. We made that switch over the summer, so it has been a little hectic, but we are excited about the new system,” Coombes said.
Appleyard said members of Actively Moving Forward are concerned with the privacy settings they now have to be aware of.
“Part of our group is about privacy,” Appleyard said. “If our members wish to remain private, they would actually have to go into the site and change the settings on their own. We are working on making sure each of our members know about this.”
The website has another feature that allows clubs and organizations to participate in elections.
“It also allowed us to bring in the Student Government election system onto the website,” Coombes said. “Now any student organization can use this system to post their elections as well.”
