Now before we begin, you should know that not every group of students is registered with the College. In fact, for some groups it’s not important to be officially recognized. So before you start, you should know what being an official club means and what it allows you to do. For starters, it means that you have to abide by all college policies that pertain to student organizations. With a few exceptions, all students must be able to take join your club. You must have a faculty advisor that works closely with the club, and your officers must all be at least half-time students in good academic standing. But there’s also a lot of benefits. You can request funding from the SGA’s Finance Committee to help run your club. You can reserve campus spaces like classrooms to host meetings and special events. You’ll be listed on our directory of clubs (more on that below), and any events you register and reserve a space for will automatically be added to the online calendar of events. And you’ll be able to turn to the Office of Student Leadership & Engagement (SLE) for just about anything you may need when it comes to the running of your club.
So now that we’re clear on what it means to be a recognized Student Organization, we want to make sure that there’s not already a club here that does what you want to do. Thankfully, we have a service that does just that (and a lot more): BantamLink. They have a Club Directory that’s easy to search. And while you’re there, start to familiarize yourself with BantamLink if you haven’t used it before. All of our clubs use it to help manage many aspects of their organization, including finances and event planning.