The Howard University Student Organization Fair, hosted by Howard’s Campus Life, was held on the roof of the University Library on September 8 for students to learn more about and sign up for campus clubs. By noon, about 100 students could be seen in a line that stretched all the way to Founder’s Library, waiting to get in before the fair began.
About 50 student organizations were set up at tables decorated with posters and colorful club symbols, and they displayed printed barcodes for students to register and organization details for students to read. Some also had bowls of lollipops, stars, airheads, and bags of chips for students to munch on while surveying their options.
Organization leaders like HU Special Olympics Club Treasurer Jayden McCoy and HU Expand President Madison White hoped the fair would help their club get a fresh start.
“We’re just a young college group that just wants to bridge the gap between those with and without special needs. And, we’re doing that by hosting multiple athletic events, Howard athletics and bringing awareness to the Special Olympics community,” said McCoy, a civil engineering major. He represents Howard University’s newly formed Special Olympics College Club.
“HU Expand is basically a bucket list kind of organization to experience whatever is on your bucket list,” said Madison White, president of HU Expand and a new television and film major. “If you want to go out and try different foods, if you want to learn a new dance you know, if you want to expand your horizons, we’re here to help you with that.”
An organization called 360 wants to be a safe space for artists to come and express themselves in the new artistic movement.
“360 is a creative and cultural movement that believes creativity saves lives,” said June, a senior marketing executive who preferred to go by their pen name. “We use art as a catalyst to create social and positive change and build a community through creativity with artists to support each other and grow professionally and personally.”
Many organizations such as VOCAL, Voices Of Creativity, Acceptance and Love, want to create a space for victims of sexual violence by promoting healing through self-expression.
“We are basically a sexual violence support group and basically we promote healing through art, which can be visual art, it can be performance, it can be writing that speaks to you as a means of self-expression” Chandler Pope . A sophomore year of Tv/Fil Production and Vice President of VOCAL, said.
“We just want to provide ways for our members to express themselves as freely as possible,” Bryanna Degas said. Degas, a sophomore psychology major, is the founder of VOCAL.
“In our survivor community, we’re like a silent community and we don’t know we’re here for each other,” she said, “and so our organization is really, like bringing to light what we already I know it’s there, but by making it more visible and basically we’re vocal in our presence.”
Students who had the opportunity to participate commented on the variety of organizations available and responded positively to how they were greeted during their time with them.
Anaiya Jones, a sophomore political science major, described her experience as “welcoming” with organizations such as Speech and Debate, the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies, Model UN, and the Writers Guild, to name a few. in which she showed interest. She was given “a lot of information as well as contacts, so we can ask questions about the organization.”
“I think they’ve been pretty informative, definitely trying to make us feel more comfortable talking to them, so I like that about it,” said Delia Lebion, a legal communications major.
Many organizations also expressed their desire to have more students come to their organization, especially cultural organizations such as Howard’s Etherian and Ethiopian Student and Genesis Models.
“People will see us and think it’s exclusive only to Eterans and Etopians, but that’s not true at all. We’re definitely open to other people,” said Elroi Yonatan, a sophomore communications major in legal strategic management.
Elsie Fuakye, a creative director for Genesis Models and a freshman biology major, also shared the same sentiments. “A lot of people ask ‘What is Genesis? What is it? Can we join?’ Like, we also have the question ‘is it only for Africans?’ and it isn’t, it really isn’t.”
While there have been many positives, some organizations have expressed concerns and challenges with the membership and resources they need to sufficiently maintain their club. Clarissa Smith, an event planner for the Chinese Culture Club and a sophomore majoring in environmental studies, not only talked about how membership and interest in the organization declined over time, but also mentioned the club’s problems with funding events for keep people engaged.
“So we don’t have monthly dues or anything like that, just because we want it to be accessible to everyone at any point in time and so fundraising is kind of difficult because we don’t…we don’t charge anybody. Like we want to put on really great events, but we really don’t have the funding for it,” Smith said.
“The biggest challenge is setting up and running the laboratory. We were sponsored by Version to build the lab, but then Howard was playing games so we didn’t build it in time. So our goal this semester is to build the lab,” said Deante Taylor, Founder of Howard’s Esports team and a senior computer science major from Trinidad and Tobago.
Copy edited by Chanice McClover-Lee
