Like it or not, deciding to go to a college or university does not just involve going to classes, getting your A’s and moving on with your life. While we’re all at a small university, with only around 3,500 people on campus, going to people’s dorms or walking around Downtown, the same is true at any other big school too.
You’d have a difficult time finding someone that doesn’t have the goal of standing out or doing the most. These are the people that go to as many clubs as possible, introduce themselves to almost anyone that walks by them or cannot be quiet in class.
That’s all nice and good, but nobody can get to that status from day one. This is especially true of people who want to get involved in clubs, whether it’s the Student Government Association (SGA), Campus Activities Board (CAB) or your definite undisputable favorite, The Globe.
Here’s the problem: what happens when someone is not given a chance to do anything in an organization? How do you justify singling a person out and treating them weirdly, even though they want to help you without malice?
There’s only one reason to explain this: some people want to turn their clubs into cliques. This is not just something that happens on our campus, either.
To be clear, there’s a big difference between having selective membership, and not allowing people who have caused you problems in the past to be in your club, versus being weirdly standoffish towards someone who wants to do good for your organization.
Clubs on campus should welcome all potential newcomers because – let’s face it – if you give someone else the cold shoulder, word will spread. People will tell others not to be part of what you’re working so tirelessly to put together.
And The Globe will be as candid as possible here: we used to be a clique, and it hurt us big time.
Don’t make the same mistake that we did in previous years. While our current and past leadership has worked to undo the damage done by people routinely being ignored and stories being edited to take new writers’ voices out of their stories, we’re still feeling the consequences.
Unfortunately, this just seems to happen at student newspapers. For one, trying to treat a student newsroom like it’s “Mean Girls” is weird and cringe. It’s weird and cringe at almost any student-run organization.
We’ve heard about other student media organizations outside of our campus doing this too. All we have to say is that you are only hurting yourself just like we did in the past. Do you want your club to be remembered as the one that rejected and ignored first-years who were interested in joining? The joke is on the clubs that have lost potential talent – good luck trying to convince them to join later unless you’ve proved that leadership has changed.
How do you not be a clique? Easy: be welcoming to all, don’t give people the cold shoulder for no reason, and don’t form ingroups just for the sake of forming them. We all need each other to do well on this campus, so don’t hinder that.