The new club re-registration process, which ended on Sunday, resulted in few challenges for the majority of clubs on campus amid some confusion around the guidelines.
All clubs on campus were required to re-register by providing proof they had met new guidelines. The ten-question OurCampus form asked for a minimum of 20 members, at least four executive board members, an advisor and an updated constitution.
Failure to comply or receive an extension or exception would result in freezing club accounts on OurCampus, meaning those clubs would be unable to request budgets, use funds or request spaces. All students will receive a school-wide email with the finalized list of clubs that have successfully re-registered on Oct. 12. Clubs that do not make the list will have opportunities to appeal.
“We’re finalizing what that’s gonna look like because we think that we may do this again,” head of Student Government’s Student Organizations Committee Christo Maheras ‘26 said. “That’ll be kind of like the redemption opportunity.”
According to director of Student Involvement Vanessa Pearson, around 40 clubs did not re-register and approximately 130 clubs completed re-registration and are pending review.
“Some who missed the deadline, but want to re-register, will need to meet with the Office of Student Involvement and the Student Organizations committee to discuss reactivation,” Pearson wrote in an email.
As the only college in the Lehigh Valley without a re-registration policy, this would help logistics in the future by freezing privileges of clubs that have been inactive for over a year would and allow more room in budgeting.
While budgets for the fall semester are set, there was initial concern over whether re-registration would impact costs, since registration and travel are often cheaper when handled earlier.
“[We were worried about] if we had to [make a purchase and] we actually had the money, and we wouldn’t have been able to do it on time because we had to do the re-registration first,” vice president of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers Bruno Loyola San Martín ‘25 said. “[But, we had] no actual problems with it.”
One of the requirements for re-registration was at least 20 members on OurCampus. Yet, club meetings typically result in a much lower member turnout, creating some confusion during the re-registration process.
“[It] doesn’t really indicate how many people are actually at our meetings,” editor of The Marquis Literary Magazine Ethan Riddle ‘25 said. “It can say 30 or 40, or even higher, which would be nice, but our meetings mostly have like, five or six people.”
President of the Anime Club Taylen Mongiovi ‘25 agreed that as a club with around 140 members on OurCampus, 15-20 of whom appear at meetings and around a dozen of whom go to conventions, the member requirement was more of a confirmation of continued student interest rather than a direct headcount.
Re-registration also had less of an impact on club sports because they had already rewritten their constitutions to the new format last spring.
“That’s another reason the re-registration process didn’t have a major impact on my club,” president of men’s club volleyball Blake Hyatt ‘25 said. “Any sports club that was in existence and active during the spring of last year most likely already met the constitution format requirement of the re-registration process.”
Cormac Hurley ‘24, president of Arts Society and co-president of Thunderground, was surprised at the ease of re-registration compared to registering a new club as Thunderground started just last spring. However, Hurley noted that the re-registration form did not clarify whether the constitution was meant to be up to date with the new standards for constitutions, and members of the group submitted the old constitution for Arts Society.
“If it is the case that we were supposed to change it to the new constitution, I’m sure other clubs made the same mistake,” Hurley said. “On the registration form, I believe it just says submit your uploaded constitution right here. It didn’t say like, reminder, there’s a new [template].”
“I want to thank clubs for being diligent with all this,” Maheras said. “I think in the future, it won’t be this hectic with having this many things for clubs to do at the start of the year … We’re glad it went so well for the first time.”
Managing Editor Trebor Maitin ’24 serves as the Student Government parliamentarian. He did not contribute writing or reporting.
