Clubs persist despite setbacks

Last fall, Campus Activities released an application for student organizations seeking new recognition. The process went on routinely until the office rejected every applicant, directing them to reapply in August.

In August, Campus Activities released an application for student organizations seeking repeat recognition. The process did not go on routinely. Instead, most student organizations ran into issues with their application, Campus Activities missed its initial deadlines, and USC replaced this semester’s involvement fairs with smaller, scattered tabling fairs.

Throughout September, many clubs waited week after week for Campus Activities’ final decisions that would determine whether or not they were recognized by the University. These decisions determined the clubs’ futures at USC, and their delays came from numerous problems with this semester’s application process, both predictable and not.

The Problems: Clubs

Even for the clubs that fell victim to the freeze in January, there was a plan in place. The University requested that those clubs reapply to become a recognized student organization.

In January, Campus Activities wrote that the RSO freeze resulted from a need “to ensure that RSOs — which currently number over 900 at USC — are both supported and fulfilling the important role they play in our campus community.” The resolution to make new clubs apply alongside the 900 pre-existing clubs may have stressed the system already struggling to “support” and “fulfill” their needs.

According to many club leaders, the timeline to handle this stress was never adequate. 

“What threw us off the most was how swift the first deadline would be,” said Andrew Bawiec, the co-president of SC Garden Club and a senior majoring in environmental studies. “Previous years … we were given more time than just a single week.”

When Campus Activities first contacted RSOs on Aug. 8, the deadline to apply to table at the first involvement fair was eight days away — Aug. 16. However, RSOs wouldn’t have all of the necessary materials to apply until Aug. 12, when Campus Activities released the required training modules for officers and advisers.

While the applications are typically released before the beginning of the school year, the shortened turnaround made the process more difficult, Bawiec said.

“You’re asking people to do club activities before the school year starts, which is always tricky, especially with advisers,” Bawiec said. “[Our adviser has] been very lovely [and] communicative with us, but especially on such a time crunch, we were stressed.”

Josh Morton, the president of Spoiler Alert Improv and a senior majoring in theatre with an emphasis in comedy, said the timeframe they were given was unthinkable, given what goes into the application.

“While it’s not this Herculean task to sit down and do these trainings … it takes time, and especially over the summer — when you’re probably busy or don’t want to do that because it’s the summer and you shouldn’t have to — the fact that we were given four days to do it, to me, is mind-boggling,” Morton said.

Still, clubs wanted to make the deadline, so they pushed on, in spite of setbacks.

“Our auditions were planned for the second weekend of school, so if we couldn’t get in on that involvement fair, then it didn’t matter if we got into a different one, because that’s really all we care to go to that for: to advertise our auditions and get people in the door in that way,” Morton said. “It was a lot. The timing was really tight, and the communication with Student Affairs was difficult, to say the least.”

A fast-approaching first deadline threatened many RSOs with discouragement, especially those where close communication was not an option. Christophe Merriam, the co-president of Trojan Filmmakers Club and a junior majoring in the business of cinematic arts, said TFC had to wrangle a team of officers scattered around the globe.

“I was in New York shooting a commercial … My co-president wasn’t in the country; she was visiting family. My vice president, pretty sure they were out of town, as well. The treasurer was out of town,” Merriam said. “At that point, we were just like, ‘There’s no way we’re going to be able to finish this.’”

Meanwhile, even club leaders on campus scrambled to organize their applications. Rather than email Campus Activities and wait days for a response, Morton opted to go into the offices directly, which he considered an advantage. 

“Not everyone has the time to go into the USC whatever office and ask all these questions. Not everyone has the privilege of having their adviser’s phone number, who they can easily contact,” Morton said. “Even though I had all these things going for me, I still struggled.”

In Garden Club’s case, as they were not informed of where to find their required training modules, they needed to consult other students on Reddit to find the trainings. While the club also reached out to Campus Activities, the response from Reddit came quicker. Bawiec said the delay made an already difficult deadline even more stressful.

“We had to delay our individual officer training by the first couple days, pretty much leaving 48 hours before the first deadline for all of our officers to complete the trainings,” Bawiec said. “We pulled it together, but it’s a bit ridiculous of an expectation.”

Morton said the trainings also became an issue for Spoiler Alert, mostly because of the poor design of the website where the trainings were located.

“When you open up the page, there’s this giant blue rectangle, and inside of that is a lot of text, basically telling you everything you do, and they hyperlinked the trainings. If you know anything about hyperlinks, you know that hyperlinks are also blue, so there was no way of knowing they were hyperlinked,” Morton said. “It was just a facepalm moment of, like, great web design.”

While officers could look to Campus Activities’ FAQ page to answer many of their questions, the location of officer training modules could not be found on the page. Further, applicants did not receive emails spreading information about widespread issues such as this.

At the same time, when filling out the application, Morton discovered the faculty adviser who had worked with the club for the past year was no longer able to serve as faculty adviser. Because of their part-time employment, the application would not accept the adviser in the role. As a result, Morton needed to find another adviser for the club.

Spoiler Alert was able to handle all of its woes before the first deadline passed, and they submitted the application. Morton said they were quickly denied.

“There were three words missing in our Constitution, which is absurd that that is a reason that you can halt someone’s process,” Morton said. “It’s just so bureaucratic and unnecessary.”

As has been made clear by the slew of outspoken club leaders in the time since, issues like these were not contained to a single group or school. They were prevalent everywhere.

In the middle of the application process, the School of Cinematic Arts held a meeting to lay down some new rules for their own RSO program, which ran parallel to the Universitywide RSO program. Merriam and leaders of other aspiring SCA RSOs attended.

“This year, SCA was planning on changing it where you had to be a USC RSO in order to get the SCA RSO,” Merriam said. “In the meeting, most of the orgs were like, ‘We’re struggling with obtaining USC RSO status.’”

Merriam estimated that 25 organizations attended the meeting and that only one or two were not struggling with the application process.

At an Undergraduate Student Government meeting Sept. 17, over 10 RSO members and leaders spoke to USG and Diana Zarate, a program coordinator from Campus Activities unaffiliated with the RSO team. Alexandria Gee, a fifth year majoring in theatre, said the issues with this year’s application process were unprecedented and discouraging.

“This is something that came out of the blue,” Gee said. “I don’t know what the problem is, but it’s getting to the point where who wants to be involved and have leadership if it’s gonna take a toll on our mental health?”

The Hurdles: Campus Activities

After noticing issues with the application process, Campus Activities scrapped the idea of hosting traditional involvement fairs. It became abundantly clear they would not be populated at the rate the office was approving applications.

For the entirety of the application process, that rate had been a mystery. Campus Activities did not provide a timeline for when clubs would receive word back. That changed Sept. 14, when they revealed how many applications they had processed in the month since. In one month, the office made it through 11 days of applications. In other words, they were missing their target goals by over a week.

Under the original plan, Campus Activities intended to have made it through all applications submitted on or prior to Aug. 30 by Sept. 12, the proposed second involvement fair. Instead, that same weekend, the office had only made it through applications sent in by Aug. 23.

Campus Activities estimated that they would complete processing by the end of September, but if their rate of responses held steady, they would finish processing Oct. 26. Their estimation indicates they either already made it through the majority of applications by Sept. 14 or their processing speed increased over time.

USC took an office that, by its own admission, was not equipped to take on additional responsibilities last spring and threw that same office into an overwhelmingly difficult situation. Many, in and out of the office, paid the price.

Morton, for example, resubmitted Spoiler Alert’s application with the proper changes to the club’s constitution, but they were rejected once again, after receiving the same — now outdated — information included on their first rejection.

When it came to the second week of Campus Activities’ revamped RSO Spotlight Tabling Fairs, Morton walked into the offices to get the club’s problems sorted once and for all. Morton met with a coordinator who permitted the club to table at the fair.

“So I bring my poster on Thursday, the second week, and I’m like, ‘Hey, I did everything you told me, how do I get to table at the fair this week?’” Morton said. “When I went into the [coordinator’s] office, the first thing she told me was … ‘I’m working 12 hours a day, and I go home, and I don’t eat food.’”

Although Morton said the plea for sympathy was hard to accept considering the lack of communication, Morton said he still saw Campus Activities putting forth a genuine effort that he recognized.

“I’m sure they’re trying, and I’m grateful that they’re putting in the work, but at the same time, this has caused so much anguish for me and for, I’m sure, plenty of other people in my position, and so my patience is really thin,” Morton said.

The problems getting recognition before the tabling fairs then caused other issues for the affected clubs. Bawiec said Garden Club missed out on an important enrollment opportunity when they were unable to secure a spot at the fair.

“A big portion of Garden Club’s membership comes from the involvement fair, especially the early involvement fairs. It is vital for organizations to have those spaces so that … we can advertise,” Bawiec said.

Though Campus Activities redesigned the fairs to meet the needs of the delayed timeline, Morton said the new tabling fairs presented problems with timing and attendance.

“The fair just felt depressing this year,” Morton said. “That’s super lame, because if I didn’t find out about my club freshman year — oh my God, I would have had a miserable freshman year.”

Bawiec said the problems affected opportunities for collaboration in addition to the problems with advertising.

“I am not aware of what new clubs have been added,” Bawiec said. “In previous semesters, I would peruse the involvement fair in order to see if there were clubs that we could maybe collaborate with, but I can’t really do that.”

At the Sept. 17 USG meeting, Lawrence Sung — a senior majoring in international relations with an emphasis in global business — said although the problems with the application process affected senior leadership, their effects would be more damaging for newer students.

“The people that ultimately suffer … are the underclassmen, the freshmen, and especially the transfers and the spring admits that come here needing community and are right now unable to find that community,” Sung said.

Finding a Lifeline

Merriam said being a club in SCA significantly reduced the stress the club faced last semester — having been a victim of the freeze — as the school offered help where the University did not.

“Our saving grace last year was we were an SCA RSO,” Merriam said. “Due to still being a club that had a lot of membership, there were a lot of people within SCA that were very helpful with us.”

That help continues this semester, according to Merriam.

“Luckily, SCA is trying to work with us a lot, which I’m very thankful for,” Merriam said. “A lot of the faculty there has been really nice with trying to help us book rooms and getting things like that on campus.”

At the meeting between SCA and its clubs, organizations representing various interests were seeking RSO status. Merriam said the lack of help for many of the smaller, newly formed clubs was a clear issue.

“There’s so many really cool SCA student orgs that do so many different things, whether it’s in animation, in games, in film,” Merriam said. “It’s definitely wrong that USC isn’t helping bolster these things, especially for programs that historically haven’t had as many clubs and things. It’s really important that we amplify those voices and give them the resources that they do need.”

Morton said his improv club was his favorite part of his time at USC and lamented the lack of support for an aspect of the college experience that he saw as integral.

“I’ve enjoyed my classes. I’ve enjoyed meeting people, but this has been a truly unique experience that I know I couldn’t get at any other school,” Morton said. “Whenever I am talking to a prospective student about USC, the first thing I talk about is my experience with this group.”

Though Campus Activities recognized that clubs “are responsible for the majority of programs and events held on campus, including concerts, lectures, special events, spirit rallies, cultural and social events, and conferences,” Morton said the lack of communication and support for student organizations was “baffling.”

“Without these student organizations, USC would be a hollow shell of a university,” Morton said. “It would be a research institution that has parties, and while for some people that’s great, that’s not what I want out of college.”

As a member of a club that had previously operated with and without RSO status, Merriam said the setbacks would not stop the club from operating at its highest possible capacity.

“We have a pretty active membership base, and people enjoy the club, but it’s kind of ridiculous that we struggle with just getting our RSO status,” Merriam said. “We’ve done it once without it. We can do it again. We’re just gonna stick our heads down and still provide the same resources that we have before for students.”

Sean Campbell contributed to this report.