In past years, Suffolk’s Student Leadership and Involvement Office has routinely held an involvement fair at the start of each semester to showcase clubs and organizations across campus. This winter, SLI made the announcement there will not be an involvement fair to start the spring semester but promotion by tabling throughout the spring is highly encouraged.
Director of SLI Marissa Pierre sent out an email to club and organization leaders Jan. 6, breaking the news and extending support towards individual tabling in the Sawyer and Samia academic buildings.
“SLI will not be hosting a Winter Involvement Fair this semester. However, if your club is still interested in reserving a table to promote your club or hosting a recruitment event, please reach out to an SLI advisor. We would be more than happy to help you coordinate,” Pierre wrote.
Though historically the Winter Involvement Fair does not have the attendance numbers of the Fall Involvement Fair, the opportunity to see all the clubs and organizations Suffolk has to offer in one place will bring a change to student involvement this semester and the way groups advertise for new members.
Pierre said that the Fall Involvement Fair saw nearly 1,500 students this year, however SLI often sees less than half attend the winter fair.
There are some performing arts based groups that do not hold auditions in the spring semester, so the lack of an involvement fair is less impactful on their recruitment schedule.
“Pom only had auditions in the fall so the cancellation of the Winter Involvement Fair did not impact us too much because we do not hold spring auditions,” said Valentina Tolentina, junior Pom captain and vice president for the Latine Student Alliance. “However, multiple dance clubs hold spring auditions and they have to rely on posters and media posts to get the attention of students. There are people who do not have social media and did not know their auditions were happening.”
Many students in Performing Arts Office groups are not theater majors as Suffolk does not require being involved in the theater department to participate in the arts. However, with an office in the corner of the third floor in the Sawyer academic building, flyers and word of mouth are the PAO groups’ only opportunities to really reach the student body without things like tabling or an involvement fair.
“As a PAO group, visibility is already a challenge. The involvement fair is one of the few spaces where we are able to reach a range of students at once, especially those who are not connected to PAO,” said Jessa DiDonato, senior captain of W!CKED and a PAO student ambassador. “We are often less visible than larger or more well-known campus clubs. Without that, it becomes harder to ensure students even know auditions are happening, let alone feel encouraged to participate.”
Many of Suffolk’s groups do not require any sort of audition, being a special interest club, academic or cultural organization. These groups see rolling admissions with the opportunity to join throughout any semester during weekly meetings.
“I am a student leader in multiple clubs on campus. We heavily rely on the involvement fairs to gauge the interest of the student body. It is also a great way for people to get a sneak peak into what the club looks like,” said Tolentina.
Pierre explained the involvement fair was not written off of the spring schedule because of any kind of budget or conflict, but from student response and retention rates.
“One of the main reasons for the cancellation was feedback we received from students. While many clubs enjoy participating in the Winter Involvement Fair, we consistently hear that it doesn’t lead to strong retention,” said Pierre. “We are encouraging student organizations to think creatively about ways to engage and retain members throughout the semester. This could include additional tabling opportunities, recruitment events, or other engagement efforts.”
From a statistical standpoint a lack of retention makes sense to skip over a fair that takes time and planning for many students and advisors across campus. However, from a student leader standpoint, senior Alexis Martin explained incoming students and second semester freshmen may lose out on an opportunity to see all their involvement options.
“Being a Ram supporter, you hear students that are like ‘this first semester I’m gonna focus on my academics, but then next semester I’m gonna go get involved,’” said Martin, former Alpha Sigma Alpha president. “How are they gonna know how to get involved? Yes, we have SU Connect and we have all that other stuff, but also, they don’t know how to use that necessarily. And the involvement fair, as overstimulating as it is, it’s something that really helps to get more traffic, especially towards Greek life.”
Martin served as Suffolk’s ASA chapter president until the end of the 2025 fall semester, and elaborated that because Greek life is not necessarily popular or advertised to students it takes them the extra step of being seen and not sought out to gain members.
“It makes organizations, especially Greek life, have to change the way that we do recruitment, not to say it’s just inconveniencing us, but it kind of is too,” said Martin. “And it’s also just really not helpful at all for us to not be able to present ourselves to the student body.”
Suffolk officially added a second fraternity in the fall, inviting Tau Kappa Epsilon back to campus. With only one involvement fair under their belt, TKE will disproportionately be affected by losing this opportunity because they are so young.
“I think it will have a big impact on our recruiting for the semester,” said Braydon Walorz, TKE president. “While it won’t ruin our recruiting, the involvement fair is a great way for clubs to advertise to the majority of the student body. Without that we will have to focus on other avenues which may not be as effective.”
When Sandy Tran, secretary of the Vietnamese Student Association, heard the semester’s involvement fair would not be happening, she said she felt “shocked and disappointed” and worried for spring transfer students or those who want to spark their involvement a semester in.
“In the fall as a transfer student, I was more concerned about getting acclimated to the sudden change and focused more on my classes. After I had adjusted, I joined VSA in the spring along with other new members after attending the winter fair,” said Tran.
Tran is concerned that the lack of involvement fair will limit Vietnamese Student Association’s ability to communicate who they are with potential members.
“Since our club focuses on Vietnamese culture, there is a misconception that members must be Vietnamese in order to join, but we emphasize it’s not a requirement,” said Tran. “It is a lot easier to emphasize that point during the fair when hundreds of students come by our booth to get more info.”
Suffolk’s Model UN is currently building their team to go to the National Model United Nations conference in New York City this April. They need 10 members to travel along with their e-board to compete in the most prestigious intercollegiate Model UN conference in the world.
Last spring, one third of their applicants applied after they learned about the program at the Spring Involvement Fair, according to junior public relations major and Model UN President Caitlyn Siler. This year, Siler worries about the amount of people who will learn about the opportunities without having the involvement fair.
“I don’t only come at this from a president’s perspective, but also thinking back to my freshman year. I came here from Texas, I knew no one here, absolutely no one. And I remember trying to figure out if there was a Model UN team, or trying to figure out what I wanted to do, on campus, and I had virtually no idea,” said Siler. “I ended up going with my roommates to the involvement fair and was able to hunt down the Model UN table and that was how I got involved and got that information. But on top of that, I also ran into the Greek life section and ended up signing up for recruitment and that set me on a track to what I’m doing now, basically.”
As Pierre stated in her email to club and organization leaders, this can be an opportunity to think outside the box for student reach out and visibility, however, it does take away an easy and historically guaranteed way to meet students face to face.
“I think students want to be involved, they just need to be given an opportunity and you’ve taken an opportunity from them. The Winter Involvement Fair does not cost anything, I would understand if it was because of the budget cuts, but you just put out tables and give us a place to stand. If there was something that we as student leaders could have helped to keep this alive, we would have done it, but we weren’t given an option, it was just taken away,” said Siler.
The Journal’s Maren Halpin and Julia Capraro contributed to the reporting of this story.
