This semester, the Tufts Community Union Senate Judiciary recognized 22 new student clubs and organizations, granting them access to funding, room reservations and tabling at the club fair.
“It offers legitimacy,” Anthony Vitale, a sophomore and Judiciary re-recognition chair, said.
The Judiciary manages the recognition and re-recognition of student organizations. Its seven-member board oversees the process to certify organizations, which takes place over the fall semester. This year’s batch of new clubs is larger than usual.
“It’s a little high, but we are seeing in the last few years … more applications than we’ve ever seen before,” Joe Golia, Tufts director for campus life, said.
The application process starts early in the academic year.
“We have an initial meeting with all applicants, usually the first week of October, and that’s when the process really starts,” Golia said.
Sophomore Kyle Pidedjian, co-president of the newly-recognized Armenian Students Association, described the multi-step process of recognition.
“[At the] beginning of last year, we got recognized as a club pending recognition, which means that we can book rooms [and] we’re on the Jumbo Life web page, but it says we’re pending and we don’t get funding,” Pidedjian said.
Pidedjian said ASA hopes to expand its cultural and social programming while fostering a sense of community for both Armenian and non-Armenian students. The group plans a mix of educational and social events to engage members and connect with the broader Boston Armenian community.
“We do everything from speaker events to dinners with other Boston area Armenian clubs,” Pididjian said. “We just try and make a space for both [undergraduates] and graduate students to come together and have a community.”
Meanwhile, the Judiciary is spending their spring semester ensuring that existing clubs are maintaining their standards.
“I’m basically just organizing the list. [We] review every club, see what they’re doing, make sure they’re still satisfying their requirements to be a club,” Vitale said.
Each member of the Judiciary reviews a number of clubs to ensure that event, member and constitutional requirements are still met. The Judiciary will meet soon to discuss any organizations that may be falling short of those standards.
“For the majority of clubs, they never hear from us, we do an independent review and they’re good,” Vitale said.
The addition of 22 clubs also raises questions about whether the Treasury can fund the growing number of organizations. TCU Treasurer Brendan French, a junior, believes funding for new organizations should fall within TCU’s means.
“The number that I communicated was a range of $20,000-$30,000,” French said. “That essentially would be able to cover this amount comfortably for the budgets for all of the new clubs.”
French added that newly recognized organizations face a funding cap of $3,000 for their first semester as an official club.
French also noted that the Treasury has been able to handle rising costs because of reduced club activity during COVID-19, which created surplus funds that helped offset the cost in the past few years. However, that surplus may be decreasing.
“There is going to be an expectation of a slight decrease across most, if not all, club budgets, just because it’s been about three, four years [of surplus],” French said.
Vitale noted that clubs were made aware of these financial realities during the process.
“We told clubs that [they’re] probably not going to get, in some cases, the budget that you requested,’” Vitale said.
This caution reflects the continual increase of costs for club activities.
“The amount of travel has just really exploded. The type of events and the higher quality, that leads to just everything being more expensive,” Golia said.
Regardless of funds available, Vitale still wants to encourage student organizations to apply for recognition.
“I want to see as many clubs at Tufts as possible,” he said. “[We want to] have a little niche for everyone.”
