The student organization fair help students build and improve their personal set of skills. It gives them an opportunity to get involved on campus and become part of campus activities and make a positive impact in the local community.
The student organization fair took a place Aug. 28 in the Oval from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. About 70 registered student organization participated to showcase their purposes and share their missions.
“It is an opportunity for our registered students’ organizations to showcase a little bit about what they do and to try to recruit new students to join them through this next academic year,” said Eva Sager, associate director for Campus Activities Center (CAC). “There is students that might be first year students on our campus or transfer students or even upper classmen who maybe haven’t thought about getting involved before.”
Sager said that the student organization fair is an opportunity to develop some skill sets.
“For a lot of our students we know it’s building those soft skills, so time management, conflict resolution, working with different people, and those are really skills that employers today want to have, so sometimes it gives our students an opportunity to develop something that maybe they are not getting in an academic setting.”
Sager said students can start their own student organization. It requires three members at least; a president, vice president, a treasurer, and finally a faculty member to be the advisor for the organization.
“The organization has to be able to write a constitution and they should not be duplicating the purpose of an organization that are already exist,” Sager said.
Sager said if somebody is interested in starting student organization they should make an appointment with campus activities to talk before they file the paper work.
“I think that the student organization fair is great way to get to know new students, especially freshmen who haven’t had a chance to get to know our organizations on campus, so it has been really awesome; we have talked to a lot of the people already so it’s really awesome,” said Aspyn Green, sophomore in hospitality and tourism management and the president of the outdoor activities club.
“At the outdoor activities club,we do a lot of fun stuff, we do camping kayaking, skiing… basically anything outdoor, we have a lot of good stuff planned this year just keep a look out on Facebook,” Green said.
Mekayla Melvine, senior in psychology, participated in the fair with student alliance for gender equality (SAGE), as she is the club’s president.
“The student alliance for gender equality does a lot of justice group involved with intersexual feminism… in the past we have done the take back the night, which is a feminist walk force against the sexual assault, and in the future we are going to be working with the safehouse to bring awareness about demotic violence.”
“Students should consider joining the student alliance for gender equality because not only it’s super informational the more people congregate and talk about issues in their communities the more likely it is to actually produce change and action, most importantly and in today’s age we have a lot of people who don’t believe LGBTQI or women should have rights or that boys should not cry—we need more people who say that boy should be able to cry women should be able to be in leaders of power and LGBTQI should have the rights as any other human being in here,” Melvine said. “Just everybody is equal and we need to talk about and actually be active about.”
There were numerous clubs lining the Oval with information and treats for interested students, one of which included ENACTUS, led by Maddison Monsour, senior in business management and president of ENACTUS.
“ENACTUS is a student led organization where students can meet together to make a positive impact on the world, we use our knowledge, skills, passions, and talents to create projects to benefit the local and global community…” Monsour said. “The hands-on experience we get through ENACTUS is key to how we seek opportunities, brainstorm solutions, and improve livelihoods.”
Monsour said that students should join ENACTUS because they are are making impacts within the world.
“We are making real impacts on real people; we use the seventeen sustainability goals that the UN has set for the world, such as eliminate poverty, create clean water, improve livelihoods, and end hunger stuff, like that,” Monsour said. “If you are looking to make a real change in your local community all the way to the global community ENACTUS is for you.”
Getting involved on campus can help with the networking component and exploring new development paths. “you don’t know if the person that you meet in the student organizations is going to help you develop professionally or get you an internship or even maybe helping you get an interview for a job… maybe the person that ends being your next roommate.” Said Sager.