Wheatley building. Fourth floor. Free money if you start up a club. This is all the information you’ll need from this article–unless you’re dying for a bit of humor…and want to know how to get a semester parking pass by starting a club.

There are a few things you might want to keep in mind before we begin. First of all, undergraduates aren’t the only ones that can form clubs; graduate students can do so as well through the Graduate Student Senate.

There’s also no limit to the number of clubs that can be had, though the Student Senate budgets for approximately 65-75 clubs and organizations. Multiplying the number of clubs with the amount each club receives yields an enormous sum – enough to buy 2, maybe even 3 semester parking passes. Speaking of which…

First! Grab an information packet from the Student Life Office and fill it out. Give it a name like: the Patriotic American Republican Kilning (PARK) club. You’ll need fourteen other undergraduates to sign a roster list indicating that they too, are proud, ceramic-baking Americans. Considering the average age of a UMass Boston undergraduate (172), this should be the easiest step.

And if you think PARK is a silly idea for a club, Joyce Morgan, Director of Student Life, has seen some strange groups. “I think the craziest club I’ve seen might’ve been a juggling club at another school.”

Bear in mind, undergraduate juggling clubs are far more dangerous than say, kindergarten juggling clubs. For one thing, undergraduate juggling always seems to involve lots of gasoline, knives, and other objects that really shouldn’t be flung so casually into the air. Like typewriters.

Second! Write a constitution, explaining your club’s goals and why it should be created. A sample is provided in the packet. Or you could base it off our own, U.S. Constitution, whatever’s easier.

Third! Come up with a schedule of events that you might want to do and submit that with the rest of the paperwork. If you forget to include an event, don’t worry; those wily fellows at the Student Senate have a special, top-secret fund set aside for last-minute requests. Senator Fritz Hyppolite cryptically referred to it as “the contingency fund” in a recent interview.

Fourth! Attend a special workshop (via appointment) and learn how to fill out club related paperwork. Pay close attention to the process involved with securing funds; it’s vital for our purposes.

Finally, wait a few weeks for the Student Events and Organizations Committee (SEOC) and the Student Senate to vote your club in. You’ll be given $250-$325 to put towards any activities that you’ve scheduled for your club. Withdraw the money and quickly buy a semester parking pass. Run before they realize you’ve swindled them.

Naturally, there are going to be a few naysayers who can’t possibly believe that this ruse would work.

“Obviously,” they’d say, “The SEOC and the Student Senate must have ways of keeping track of all money you spend–they’d require receipts of everything you buy wouldn’t they? And even if you manage to pull it off, they’d have your student identification number and could easily track you down. How do you expect to fool them?”

To which I’d reply: “Hmm, you’ve got a point. Anyways, would you like to join the Local Urban Norwegian Coalition for the Hungry (LUNCH)?