Freshmen struggle to learn about clubs and organizations

First-year psychology major Ryan Oden. Photo courtesy: Kaylah Burns

Some of FAMU’s first-year students have been struggling to get involved in on-campus organizations and take part in various activities.

Over the past few weeks student organizations at FAMU have been inviting students to their interest meetings to give them more information on what their club is about. Many organizations are looking for students new to FAMU to get involved outside of their academics.

Although some first-year students are looking to get involved, they are struggling to find where to look for their interests.

First-year psychology major Ryan Oden said he was interested in joining the Chicago Club as well as Big Brother Little Brother. However, he has only heard of these organizations through his peers.

“I heard of the Chicago Club through other people I met from Chicago,” Oden said. “But FAMU itself, I don’t think they do a good job sharing that information.”

Another first-year student, Destiny Rhodes, felt similarly about FAMU’s not informing new students of potential clubs they could join. Rhodes said her main interest right now is dance, since she grew up taking lessons. However, despite the fact that FAMU has many dance clubs, she has heard little information on them since arriving on campus more than six weeks ago.

“I’ve been excited to get involved because I’m ready to make some friends,” Rhodes said. “I just haven’t heard of anything from the school. I remember my RA telling me that there would be a lot of dance crews for me to choose from, and that got me kind of excited. But after that I didn’t hear much.”

Although Oden and Rhodes have been frustrated by FAMU’s effort in helping them make the transition to student organizations, they along with first-year pre-med major Kiana Reign found help through social media. Each student said they had to turn to Instagram, specifically, to look through FAMU hashtags in hopes of finding the page of a club they might like.

Reign said that without Instagram she would have never found out about the interest meeting for the Minority Association of Pre-Medical Students.

“I was getting real frustrated not knowing where to go to join clubs,” Reign said. “But I asked my friends what they were looking at to see what was going on, and they showed me a few pages with information about clubs. And then, I found the pre-med club in no time.”

Despite struggling to learn about the Minority Association of Pre-Medical Students, Reign is looking forward to attending their meeting and getting involved at FAMU.