The Committee considered new applications for recognition from the Black Artists Society and the UMBC Executive Club. Representatives from the two organizations attended the meeting, responded to questions about their Constitutions and received suggestions from the Committee. Both will resubmit their Constitutions with amendments based on the discussion.
The Political Science Council of Majors submitted revisions to its Constitution, but the revisions raised more issues than they resolved. Chris Najmi will contact the organization to discuss a resolution to the problem.
2. Student Organization Categories
The Committee discussed the practice of placing student organizations into categories like Religion/Spirituality and Cultural/Ethnic. The primary significance of most of the categories (other than Greek Life and Sports Clubs, for which there are special processes and restrictions) is that they help students to identify organizations they might be interested in joining. The Committee talked about whether a reconfigured category system with different or additional names might better serve that purpose. For example, the existing Special Interest category is a hodgepodge of organizations that do not belong in any of the other categories; maybe it would be possible to rename or reconfigure the categories so the Special Interest organizations would belong in other, more descriptive categories. Committee members agreed to come to next week's meeting (October 25th) with ideas about potential alternatives to the existing category scheme.
If you have thoughts about how to improve upon the existing scheme of student organizations categories, feel free to share them with the Committee by sending an e-mail to studentorgscomm@umbc.edu.
