A committee of students recently introduced an initiative to create new social clubs on campus. The committee plans to propose the initiative to the administration and hopes to launch the new social club system next semester.

“[The social club] is solely for people to come together and socialize — to have a place for those who want access to a consistent group of people they can hang out with as oppose to coming together to get a specific objective done,” said Association of Amherst Students President Tomi Williams ’16, one of the students spearheading this initiative.

The announcement comes a little more than three months after Amherst’s ban on fraternities went into effect. Over the summer, Williams helped organize a group of students to discuss improving Amherst’s social life in the wake of the fraternity ban and finding what he described as “a superior alternative” to fraternities.

The social club initiative is also in part a response to last spring’s National College Health Assessment, which showed that 76 percent of Amherst students reported that they have felt “very lonely” in the past year.

However, some students have asked for more recent data on loneliness at the college.

“I’m interested to see if we wait a few months and then take the temperature of the school again, now that fraternities have been banned, how that number would turn up,” said AAS senator Siraj Sindhu ’17.

The committee for social clubs is currently finalizing application processes for creation and membership of social clubs. In order to create a social club, students must create a petition and fulfill basic requirements, such as having a minimum number of participants. Additionally, each club is expected to organize at least one campus-wide event per semester.

One possible idea for determining club membership would involve both applicants and club leaders ranking one another by preference. A third party would then attempt to make unbiased matches based on these rankings.

Committee member Brian Lobdell ’15 said that the social clubs initiative is intended to be open and transparent.

“We want it to be very public and publicized. We want everyone to have the opportunity to join one if they choose to,” Lobdell said.

Committee member Jennifer Fitzpatrick ’15 said that while inclusion is an important value driving the initiative, social clubs would need to be somewhat exclusive to an extent in order to give students the power and choice to organize themselves.

Each club would therefore determine its membership based on the characteristics laid out in its mission statement. The committee has said that the goal is for social clubs to be “selectively inclusive.”

Some students have expressed concern regarding the effect that social clubs may have on student life at the college.
“I’m anxious that social clubs, in the way in which they have currently been devised, will lead to more social structure on campus. My fear is that social structure will affect social maneuverability,” Sindhu said.

“By creating selective social groups en masse, we are de-democratizing the campus and reinforcing the social hierarchies which have plagued Amherst since its founding,” said Sam Rosenblum ’16.

Some students have questioned what they see as potential similarities between social clubs and fraternities.

“I’m skeptical, and I think others are as well, about whether these social clubs are really different from fraternities, insofar as they have an application process from which one can be rejected and given that in their current form they could be single-gender,” Sindhu said.

In response to these concerns, some students argued that there would be a fundamental difference between fraternities and social clubs.

“We don’t criticize the fraternities for having allowed people to come together in a purely social manner, but our concern was that it did not provide this opportunity equally,” said AAS Chief of Staff Tommy Raskin ’17. “Our hope with these social clubs is that they will give everyone an opportunity to bond.”

Committee members also expressed hopes that social clubs will give more social options to non-athletes.

“Because we have such a large percentage of our student body that already gets social organization from participating in sports, we can’t stop that. But we can make this type of organization available to all students,” Williams said. At Amherst, 32 percent of the student body participates in varsity athletics, with approximately 80 percent competing in intramural and club sports.

As with athletes and members of club sports, social club members will be required to sign a no-hazing contract and participate in bystander training. Unlike the former fraternities, they will also have a public presence and work with the administration.

“There was a lack of oversight for the previous fraternities because they were underground. But with social clubs there is oversight by administration and the leaders of the clubs,” Williams said.

To further regulate the social clubs, there are plans to create a Social Club Oversight Committee composed of club leaders and administrative members. The committee will maintain interclub relations and ensure that clubs follow the guidelines that are to be set in place.

To engage the larger community in the current discussions about social clubs, there are also plans to hold dorm talks and workshops in the weeks after Thanksgiving break.