[Ansteorra] Student Chapter?

[robert segrest]

As Sir Lyonel pointed out, I took a shot recently at (re)starting a College at UT recently.  I failed.  I did, however, learn a few things in the process.  Among them:

1)  There are a lot of barriers to starting a college successfully.  Some come from the SCA, more come from the school, and many more are simply factors of time and energy

2)  The SCA cannot really do much to help, in an official capacity.  Since you will have to demonstrate that you have the framework of an SCA organization before getting even incipient status, your organization will not have any legal connection to the SCA during the first key months of your process.  Thierefore you will not enjoy status as a recognized non-profit until you meet the SCA's criteria for incipient status.  This makes it difficult to convince Student Organization officials that you are not out of your mind.

3)  Schools tend to have very stringent rules covering student organizations.  They are different for each school.  At UT I was not able to find a legal pathway by which a student organization might become part of an international non-profit.  This might have been surmountable, we never got far enough to find out.  I think you will want to get a good understanding of your campus' rules before deciding whether you want to be affiliated with the school or not.

4)  Weapons rules may be particularly hard to get around, if you want to have fighting.  At UT, anything that might be construed as a weapon had to be cleared by the campus police, carried by a specific individual, have a detailed for filed for exactly what was going to be done with it, where, when and by whom, for every instance that the weapon appeared on campus.  I was never able to talk to anyone in a position to get special dispensation on this issue, thus effectively shutting down any hope for fighter practice, or even fighting demos.

5)  You will need a core group of people who are strongly motivated to make this happen.  If you are a non-traditional student (especially one over about 30) you will face social barriers to recruiting.  Presumably you will be in school, and therefore your first priority will be schoolwork.  If you are also working or have family obligations, it will be difficult to make the time to do recruiting, cheerleading, organizing, etc. for your group.

6)  The story of most colleges has been, "we got it going, then the officers graduated and it fell apart".  The first two priorities of a college group are going to have to be recruiting and leader development if it is going to keep going.

Please don't view this as a laundry list of reasons not to try to start a group.  Instead, please do look at it as a set of concerns that you will want to address, or at least consider.  I still think a group could be successfully started at UT, and I regret that I was not able to put all the pieces together to do it.  I think that a smaller school farther from another group will have some advantages and some drawbacks in the same process.  I encourage you to learn both the school's rules for student groups and the kingdom's rules for new group formation.  If there is anything I can do to assist, please do not hesitate to ask me.  I would be happy to share the things that I have learned, and I wish you success in spreading our dream.

Your servant,

Ld Fatthiopap Laszlo