UB students have created 12 new clubs through the Student Association this semester, adding to the SA’s approximately 170 undergraduate clubs.
But the budgets of an additional 29 SA-recognized clubs — including the Nerf or Nothing Club, College Republicans, PODER Latinos Unidos and United Nations SA, among others — remain frozen due to lack of university recognition, SA Vice President Montana Desabio and SA Treasurer Austin Wolfgang told The Spectrum in emails.
Of those, 28 clubs have not re-registered with the university for the 2021-22 academic year but could do so at any time to unfreeze their budget. The remaining club re-registered, but the university revoked its registration after the club violated university COVID-19 guidelines. That club will be eligible for recognition again in the 2022-23 academic year. The Spectrum doesn’t know the identity of that club.
Those 28 clubs have not submitted e-board updates to the SA, “are assumed to be empty” and will be derecognized by the SA Senate in the spring semester if they remain inactive, Wolfgang said.
Formal derecognition by the SA Senate would effectively dissolve the clubs and their budgets.
It’s an outcome the SA e-board says it would prefer to avoid.
“We want to give clubs a bit of time to see if they can naturally come back before we go through and start trying to derecognize the clubs that didn’t survive [the pandemic],” Wolfgang said in an interview with The Spectrum.
The SA has been able to “resurrect” some clubs this semester, Desabio said, mostly because students interested in starting an identical club simply took over an existing club’s budget.
“Frozen clubs can be up and running [again] if undergraduate students decide to take them over,” she said in an email to The Spectrum. “They can email me if they would like to get more information.”
Many clubs have been operating in person this semester for the first time since the start of the pandemic, which has left some clubs without experienced e-board members — or any members at all. SA has addressed this issue by changing the format of their mandatory club training, which club e-boards have to complete every year to access their budgets.
“We actually looked at what clubs needed,” SA President Nick Singh said in an interview with The Spectrum. “How do you lead an e-board? How do you lead your members? How do you conduct meetings? This stuff is what we specifically geared the meeting towards.”
The full list of new clubs is as follows:
Animation Production Club
Vegan Club
UB English Club
UB Cake Club
UB French Club
Film Club
Pre-Vet's
Biotechnical and Clinical Laboratory Science Student Association
Golf Association
S.M.I.L.E.S
Bulls Against Trafficking
Stand-Up & Laugh
Grant Ashley is a senior news/features editor and can be reached at grant.ashley@ubspectrum.com
Grant Ashley is the editor in chief of The Spectrum. He's also reported for NPR, WBFO, WIVB and The Buffalo News. He enjoys taking long bike rides, baking with his parents’ ingredients and recreating Bob Ross paintings in crayon. He can be found on the platform formerly known as Twitter at @Grantrashley.
Photo: Ryan Hagen | UB Athletics
