Changes to Club Chartering For the New School Year

“What makes your organization unique?” This is now one of the newly mandated questions a student needs to answer when chartering a club on StuyActivities. Stuyvesant’s Student Union (SU) announced on August 1 that the chartering process for clubs had begun for the new school year. The website club catalog was wiped clean, and the SU has implemented new prerequisites for chartering clubs.

Among these rules was a new section of the chartering form dedicated to past activity and engagement. Returning clubs are now allowed to report challenges faced in the previous school year and plans to address the challenges moving forward. In addition, all old club charters are now saved in an Archive section of the website, which helps streamline the rechartering process.

The Student Union claims to have taken these steps to refine the chartering process to assess whether the club truly brings value to the Stuyvesant community. “We’ve added the returning charter question so Clubs/Pubs can judge whether a club has made fair attempts to provide something of meaning to the Stuy community and whether they intend to continue to do great in the coming school year,” SU Co-Director of IT David Chen said in an e-mail interview.

The refined chartering process and the prospect of club mergers are considered by the SU to have been largely beneficial to the clubs and pubs process. “This may help alleviate the club room crunch somewhat, as compared to last year when it was a pretty brutal struggle for space,” Chen said.

This sentiment was echoed by other club leaders, specifically regarding the archived club charters. “I’m definitely a fan of the change where you need to specify what your club has done last year in order to recharter it. I’ve seen way too many clubs that seem really cool on paper but never actually host any meetings or do what they promised, so I’m glad that Clubs and Pubs is finding a way to filter out some of these clubs,” Stuy FBLA president Audrey Jing said.

The majority of club leaders reported at least some level of efficiency gained by the rechartering process. “[It took] literally five minutes,” president of Stuy Fungi Club Joshua Moe said. “I just went into the archive and searched up Stuygi’s old charter.”

Nevertheless, there were some mixed responses to the new returning clubs section of the charter. “Asking clubs to prove their worth by showing what they did over the course of the last year weeds out inactive clubs, something the SU has the right and need to do. I just worry that it unfairly targets clubs that had a late start and didn't have much time to get settled,” Environmental Club president Mark Ionis said. “I think, in terms of the questions asked, the rechartering process is fine as it is.”

There were also some expressions of discontent regarding the current chartering process for returning clubs. “What I wish would be improved on is the communication between the SU and rechartering clubs after submission of the recharter. More feedback would make it easier for clubs to understand how to improve their charters,” Ionis said.

Despite providing more stringent requirements for club approval, the newly implemented features on StuyActivities ultimately seemed to be generally considered a positive step toward instituting a more effective Clubs and Pubs department. “Throughout the school year, we intend to involve club-pub members in auditing meetings held by various clubs. This strategic approach will enable us to ensure the clubs uphold the objectives outlined in their charters,” SU Deputy Director of Clubs and Pubs M M Abrar Hasnat said.