Are you thinking about starting a student group with SAMU? Fear not! Here are six easy tips to get you started and ready to contribute to campus culture.

Illustration by Hayden Carkner/The Griff

1. In order to create a student group, you must have at least five executives. 

The positions are:

1. The Dictator
2. Social nepo baby that the dictator is besties with
3. The one that does the actual work 
4. One that is there because it looks good for their resume, but otherwise gives no shits about the club. 
5. Vice-president (social media & marketing)

2. You must make a constitution for your tens of members. 

This constitution is the word of law for your club. It will dictate who in your club can get kicked out, what the club does, as if the name isn’t obvious enough, and how to kick out members that do not conform to your constitution. 

A. It is recommended that you have a jury. You can check the SAMU policy book, section a, subsection 3.4 on how to force your club members to check in for jury duty. 

3. SAMU policies are the word of law. They override the word of your constitution. 

Sorry if you spent a lot of time making your club constitution that governs your tens of people, but you should have checked and read all 90 pages of the SAMU policy hand book before writing 10 pages governing your little club. 

4. Plan ahead.

In order to create a request form for a fun, little social event, you must plan ahead a minimum of 10 business days (two calendar weeks). If you want a legitimate location that is accessible to everyone and has good vibes though, you are going to have to plan ahead 6 weeks. Approval time will take forever however, so it’s recommended you add a cushion of waiting time for 5 weeks. Oh will the semester be over by then? Maybe plan ahead during your summer break next time. 

5. Pre-approval criteria.

What kind of event are you planning? Do you have the magical foresight to tell how many people are going to show up, even though the RSVP system only works AFTER YOU GET YOUR EVENT APPROVED? This matters because we might need to hire security. No, we do not talk about THE incident.

6. Fill out the risk matrix.

We gave you 10 different scenarios to evaluate, before asking you to give us 10 different scenarios. You can list as many outlandish scenarios as you want, but make sure you deal with it pragmatically as possible, because SAMU doesn’t want to fill out the paperwork for insurance.