Q&A with Student Life Student Orgs. Coordinator Carmen Bao

Student Organization Coordinator Carmen Bao answered some questions through e-mail about how clubs work at OU:

Question: Can students register new clubs throughout the school year?

Carmen Bao: Yes, they can. The benefit to registering before the fall deadline is eligibility for UOSA funding for the next fall. A student organization has to be registered for a year before applying for UOSA funding.

Q: What can student organizations at OU offer to new students (this includes both freshmen and transfers)?

B: Student organizations offer students a place to foster current interests or develop new ones. They also bring students with common interests together.   

Q: What do a lot of student orgs. have in common as far as activities, exposure, membership, etc.?

B: While each student organization is unique and created to fit a certain set of students' needs, I have noticed that many of our student organizations take up philanthropic projects and fund-raise to help benefit a nonprofit or charity.

Q: Why do clubs have to re-register constitutions, and why are registration deadlines staggered by year? Do some clubs not re-register constitutions?

B: Every organization must re-register every fall to maintain its active status and remain eligible for UOSA funding. We do stagger the submission of constitutions because we found it was not necessary to resubmit a constitution every year. 

   We ask organizations to resubmit constitutions every three years. Every new organization must submit a constitution upon registration.

Q: What would inspire someone create a club, for groups ranging from Christians on Campus to Latin Dance Club?

   Students form organizations to meet their interests and to create a place to meet other people with a common interest. Many student organizations also wish to share their interest to others on campus who aren't a part of their organization.

Getting the word out: Publicity at OU

   Writing messages with chalk on the ground is a popular publicity method for OU student organizations. So-called "chalking," which Student Life must approve first, can be found primarily along the South Oval and on the sidewalks to the Union and the Bizzell Library, with messages about student events or meetings, elections and public service announcements.

   Below are photo examples of the most popular student publicity forms: chalking and fliers. 

Students often walk past chalk messages, also known as "chalkings,"
on the South Oval while going to class around campus.

OU students have until Thursday to register campus organizations

Students listen to Dr. Eric Day speak about applying 

to graduate school at the OU Psychology Club's 

meeting Thursday, Sept. 23.

OU students looking to start or re-register a student organization have until this Thursday, Sept. 30 to submit the online registration to Student Life.

The required registration information comprises having at least 10 student members, an OU faculty adviser, an organization president, a current constitution and statement of purpose and alcohol event management information.

According to Student Life’s student organization section, the University of Oklahoma has more than 420 student organizations, with interests that include academic, religion, culture, honor societies and hobbies. 

“With such a large number of organizations to choose from, you can be sure to find one (or several!) that you will enjoy,” the website states for those looking to join an organization. The website also suggests students start a group if they don’t find one that fits their needs.

Registered student organizations receive benefits including an OU website and e-mail address, a mailbox in the Oklahoma Memorial Union, department sponsorships and the ability to reserve university facilities and publicize on campus through chalking and fliers.

OU’s Psychology Club President Victoria Carrasco said she joined clubs her freshman year because she loves being involved and finding connections outside of class through professors.

“I love that feeling of letting people know what else is out there … and [what] they don’t get from just coming and having that major and going to class,” said Carrasco, a psychology junior who is also in OU's Young Democrats, Pre-Law Club and Hispanic-American Student Association. “I think people really do get surprised when they do come and they actually learn valuable information they can take with them.”

The Psychology Club, which reaches out to psychology students to provide them with opportunities at OU and after graduation with guest speakers and forums, has already turned in its registration and constitution.

More than 45 undergraduate students attended the club’s Thursday, Sept. 23 meeting to hear associate psychology professor Dr. Eric Day talk about getting into graduate school.

The club meets every other Thursday at 4:30 p.m. in Dale Hall Tower room 908. Its next meeting on Oct. 7 will have graduate students speaking about life in grad school.

Carrasco said starting a new club, however, is a lot more difficult at OU than running an existing organization like the Psychology Club. The best advice she has is getting to know people through other clubs to find the potential membership and to get an idea of how a club runs.

“The second you get involved in other clubs, you’re just meeting people right there, and you get that experience,” she said. “[Running a club] is a big responsibility…but obviously you gotta love doing it.”

If students are looking to join an existing club, Student Life encourages them to use its list of student organizations to contact the organization’s president or adviser and attend its next meeting or event. 

Look for a Q&A about student organizations at OU with Student Life’s Student Organization Coordinator Carmen Bao sometime Monday. 

Mona Eltahawy's "Happy Muslims" video

Eltahawy showed her audience at her discussion Sept. 15 last Wednesday one of these video blogs she made with Time about how she confronts the usual "Muslim stereotypes" she faces when discussing the Islamic world. Take a look!

Mona Eltahawy's flier for her discussions.
Her final one is Tuesday at 7 p.m. in the Union.

Social media holds place close to activist's heart

Activist-in-Residence Mona Eltahawy.
(Courtesy of Eltahawy's Facebook page)

Mona Eltahawy wanted to know how many attendees had a Facebook when the new OU activist-in-residence began her discussion in the Oklahoma Memorial Union on Wednesday, Sept. 15 last week. The Women’s and Gender Studies Program Center for Social Justice hosted Eltahawy’s discussion, titled “Blogging for Social Change.”

Muslim activist-blogger Eltahawy, who was born in Egypt and grew up in London, said social media are now important to social change all around the world, specifically the Middle East.

“The question I’ve always asked is, who cares about blogs? Why should we care about blogs?,” Eltahawy said about young people’s reasons to use social media. “Social media have told [the people of the Middle East], ‘You count.’ The ‘I’ counts.”

Center for Social Justice Program Coordinator Stephanie Heck said Eltahawy’s passion for activism through social media made her the top pick for the center’s semester-long Activist-in-Residence program; she is living in Norman this semester while teaching a weekend course, visiting classes and interacting with students and the community.

“I think that [Mona Eltahawy] has a lot to offer and can teach students about effective activism and use of social media [and] using new media as a journalist,” Heck said in an e-mail. “Mona has a wonderful blog, which members of the WGS community (including myself) have been following since her visit last year.”

Center for Social Justice also reaches its students through social media site Facebook as a fan page.

The Center’s mission statement says: “By participating in programs, classes, and events sponsored by the Center, students receive practical and academic tools to better understand the sources of inequality in their local and global communities and the means to address them.”

As Eltahawy spoke about the recent changes in the Middle East political culture, she said Twitter and Facebook have become increasingly essential to the people who live in a world of inequality in countries like Egypt, which has been under a state of emergency for 29 years — Eltahawy said the government imprisoned a blogger who was later killed for insulting the government — and in Bahrain, which imprisoned Internet forum runners because they offended the royal family in 2005.

The number of blogs in Egypt has since spiked, from 280 in 2005 to more than 6,000 today.

“Outrage has been building on social media,” she said about how many more young people are venting about their governments online. “You get online and you share with the world how you feel.”

Eltahawy will be having another discussion Tuesday at 7 p.m. in the Union, titled “My America, My Islam,” during which she will talk about Islam in America and the controversy of the mosque building near New York City's Ground Zero site. 

Anyone can visit the Women’s and Gender Studies’ Program Center for Social Justice on Facebook or on their website.