Starting college is an exciting and overwhelming experience.
But moving to a new city, living on your own for the first time and preparing for classes are only the tip of the iceberg. The real college experience comes from meeting new people and discovering things you never knew about yourself.
And the best way to do that is by finding a group of other, like-minded individuals who share the same interests and passions—even if you yourself aren’t even sure of what those interests and passions might be. At EMU, you don’t have to look very far to find a student organization. There are almost 300 student organizations, fraternities and sororities at EMU, so the big questions isn’t “Can I get involved?” but “Which group should I join?”
With a campus as diverse as EMU’s, it’s only natural that there would be a plethora of interests, hobbies, passions, beliefs and cultural backgrounds represented by student organizations. There’s a group for just about every interest—from theater, political activism and sports to accounting, gender and sexuality and video game design.
A great resource for getting involved at EMU is Campus Life, an organization dedicated to supporting and connecting student organizations. Located on the third floor of the Student Center, Campus Life is the best place to go for information on how to get involved in a group.
To make things even easier, it has a comprehensive, searchable Web site with a list of all the active student organizations, a description of each group and a calendar of upcoming events. This can be found at www.emustudentorgs.com.
Once you join, which is as easy as entering your MyEmich login name and password, you can get in contact with the groups, see their profiles and find members on Facebook. A print copy of this guide can also be found in the Campus Life offices.
But you don’t have to go to the Student Center to find student orgs. In fact, all this week you probably won’t be able to get very far on campus without running into members of a student organization.
They will be on campus en masse helping to point bewildered freshmen in the right direction, lugging furniture and belongings into the dorms and introducing themselves at Fajita Fest, an annual event from 5-8 p.m. on Monday at University Park. Besides fajitas, games and a DJ, many student orgs will have tables set up to give incoming freshmen information on how they can join.
All other students will have their chance to discover all of the student orgs EMU has to offer at Campus Kick-Off: a student organization, volunteer and job fair from 11-2 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 17, at University Park.
And if somehow you can’t find an organization that fits you, start your own. Creating a new student organization is easy—you need at least five members, a mission statement or purpose and a faculty or staff member who is willing to act as an adviser for the group. Visit the Campus Life offices for more information on starting your own student organization.
