One day last May, the head editors of The Goliard gathered all of us who had worked on that year’s issue together for one more meeting. They then informed us that due to budget cuts (and their negligence) The Goliard was underfunded and could not print an issue that year. They explained that the College had been cutting back on the money allotted for student publications, The Wooster Voice being an exception. So they doubted any appeal would be productive.
For those of you who do not know, The Goliard is a literary magazine run entirely by a staff of fewer than 20 students. It hosts Covers (a monthly event where students can showcase their musical talent) and publishes a magazine of student-submitted prose, poetry and art among other things.
It is what you would call “a small club.” Of course, anyone can (and should!) submit their work to it, but for the most part, those roughly 20 students are the only ones for whom The Goliard is a big deal.
Moreover, The Goliard is not highly marketable for the College. It is more exciting to display the Quidditch and Ultimate Frisbee clubs (which are fantastic, by the way) as examples of passionate student involvement to wide-eyed prospective students. The Goliard and other small clubs like it sit in the background, quietly doing what they do.
If you think along the lines of, “Well, it’s a small club, what do you expect? How much does it affect the campus?” it would come as no surprise that a club like The Goliard is underfunded. But this line of thinking isn’t healthy for the campus. We need small clubs.
I recognize that The Goliard is not an important part of the lives of most of the people reading this. However, it is still important, just as every small club is important. It satisfies a relatively niche interest, but it still fulfills a need that is not otherwise met. Besides giving artists experience in submitting to a literary magazine, The Goliard provides them with a stage from which they can share their work with their peers.
Most small clubs are like The Goliard; they languish in obscurity, operating on razor-thin or non-existent budgets. In short, they do what they can with what they have.
However, the lack of funding to small clubs begins a downward spiral. With less money, small clubs can do even less. Thus, they are less visible to the student body, and fewer people get involved in them, and they become even smaller clubs.
This does not mean that The Goliard or any other club in its position should give up. Small clubs thrive if the campus supports them.
So all I ask is the next time you see a poster in Lowry about some weird event on Friday hosted by a club you have never heard of, stop and give it a chance.
Perhaps you will find a group of people as passionate about your hobby as you are. I’m sure they will be more than happy to have you.
Daniel Sweat, a Features Editor for the Voice, can be reached for comment at DSweat19@wooster.edu.
The size of the club plays a relatively small role in a clubs funding allocation. The largest influence on funding comes from proposing events and activities that are open to a wide range of students or that a wide range of students can enjoy. I believe that the issues with The Golliard’s funding stem more from repeated mismanagement. I believe there were two or three years where the budget was mismanaged and so the funding committee was much less inclined to provide funding. In any event, all groups that feel they may not have been treated equitably in the funding process should appeal to the Campus Council Budget Committee. The Budget Committee is responsible for establishing funding guidelines (what can and can be funded), the budget submission process and timeline, and addressing any grievances groups have with the allocations suggested by the SGA Allocations Committee for Campus Council’s approval.
Jon,
“The size of the club plays a relatively small role in a club[‘]s funding allocation. The largest influence on funding comes from proposing events and activities that are open to a wide range of students or that a wide range of students can enjoy.”
You seem to disagree with yourself here. If a club is small, it serves a niche interest by definition. If it were not a niche interest, the club would be larger. A wide range of students can, theoretically, enjoy an event that serves a niche interest, but they don’t. If more people came to our events, they would not be niche, by definition. So the size of a club does have an influence on its funding allocation, if only because the size of the club reflects how well it serves mainstream interests. This is why I argue that small clubs need support. Student interest and support correlates to more adequate funding.
Regardless of definitions, the Goliard does host events that are open to a wide range of students, but these events have categorically worse attendance than events hosted by WAC or other clubs like it. Last year, we hosted a MOTH storytelling event that very few people went to because very few people were interested in it; it served a niche interest. It seems to me to be obvious that more people will be interested in going to Chris Gerhard’s comedy show (put on by WAC) than will be interested in going to a poetry reading (put on by the Goliard). So the suggestion that the Goliard should host more events like WAC or other well-funded clubs seems to miss the point and sidestep the problem entirely. (I use WAC only as an example; I don’t have a personal vendetta against WAC or anything like that.) The Goliard is not WAC; it will not host events that look like WAC’s. If the budgeting committee uses events like WAC’s as a yardstick by which to determine how much money a club will get, the Goliard will always come up short.
In short, I agree that the Goliard’s are more an issue of mismanagement than administrative tomfoolery, but the suggestion to just host more events misunderstands the problem.
Thank you for your comment.