November 15, 2007 Meeting--New Student Org Categories

1. Applications for Recognition

The Committee decided to recommend recognition of the following new organizations:

Black Artists Society (funded, Special Interest)
Russian Club (funded, Cultural/Ethnic)
Amnesty International (funded, Political/Social Activism)
Women’s Lacrosse Team (restricted, Sports/Recreation)

In addition, the Committee reviewed another draft of the American Studies Council of Majors Constitution and asked Chris Najmi to set up a meeting with its President to discuss needed revisions.

2. Student Organization Categories

The Committee agreed on several changes to the system of student organization categories designed to make the categories more accurate and descriptive. The changes will be as follows:

a. The Political/Social Activism and Service categories will be replaced by a category for Political organizations and a category for Service/Social Action organizations.

b. There will be three new categories: Arts/Performance, Career/Professional and Hobbies.

c. The Special Interest category will be eliminated.

As a result of these changes, the entire set of categories will be as follows:

Academic/Departmental
Arts/Performance
Career/Professional
Cultural/Ethnic
Governance
Greek
Hobbies
Honor Societies
Intellectual Sports
Media
Political
Religion/Spirituality
Service/Social Action
Sports/Recreation

The Committee discussed the possibility of dividing the Arts/Performance category into separate Arts and Performance categories, but will wait for feedback from student organizations before making such a change. In addition, the Committee discussed the possibility of distinguishing between groups organized to compete in athletic events and groups organized around members’ interests as sports fans. The Committee agreed to defer any change to the existing Sports/Recreation category until after working with the Athletics Department and SGA to resolve outstanding issues relating to the management and funding of sports and recreation activities on campus.

The next step in the process of changing the student organization categories is to tentatively reassign organizations based on the new system, which the Committee will do at its next meeting on November 29^th. Between now and the 29^th, Chris Najmi, Nayana Davis and I will work up a proposed list of assignments for the Committee to review. Once the Committee has approved the tentative assignments, we will send an e-mail out to all student organizations soliciting feedback and inviting requests to be moved to a different category.