by Eryn O'Neal
Eryn O'Neal is the founder and acting president of Students for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (SETA) at Citrus College in Glendora, California. She started SETA this semester in hopes of educating students, faculty, and staff of the areas where animals critically suffer. You can reach her at CitrusSETA@gmail.com.
- Make certain you are committed to the cause. Starting an organization from scratch is a lot of fun, but it also takes an ample amount of effort. It takes time, dedication, and passion. If you are devoted to the cause, your club will thrive. Remember, once you take the steps to form a club, it's in your hands to ensure that the club meets the goals set by the organization. Although a club consists of many members, it is usually a handful of really dedicated members motivated by one individual that gets the behind-the-scenes jobs done and enables the organization to be successful.
- Have an idea of what goals you want to achieve. Do you want to table? Do you want to plan demonstrations? Are you interested in leafleting? Do you want to vegetarianize your campus cafeteria? These are all questions you should consider. You can visit peta2.com for more ideas. You will be more successful if you plan ahead. Adding a club on top of your school, work, and home obligations can get overwhelming, but if you take the steps to organize yourself prior to starting the club, you will be in good shape. Once you have determined what path you would like the club to take, make sure the goal is reasonable. It is better to pour your heart and soul into one project than take on too many and not give them justice.
- Get ready to recruit. Once you have decided to form a club, the next step is setting up a recruiting plan. A club without members might as well not exist. If you really want your club to be successful, you need to find people who share the same beliefs and similar goals as you do. Most schools sponsor an event where clubs can set up a booth and try to recruit new members. If this is the case, you want to make sure that your booth appeals to everyone. Since an animal rights club's member target is more focused than most other organizations, you want to make sure that you appeal to not only the established animal rights activists but also the student who doesn't know anything about animal rights. If you are handy with a marker or a paintbrush, you can create your own posters and fliers. You can contact peta2.com to request materials to hand out at the event. You can also set up a laptop or television and stream an animal rights movie for passersby to watch. If your school does not host this sort of event, you can create fliers, get them approved, and post them around your campus—just remember to include contact information. Also, keep fliers on hand. You never know when you'll run into someone in the cafeteria eating a Boca burger. Hand out fliers to anyone and everyone.
- Get informed and know why you do what you do. People want to join your club, trust me. However, many people are uniformed. You need to know your material. Practice what you are going to say ahead of time. It can be stressful to be asked many questions. You will feel more confident if you know your material and have an idea of what you're going to say. Make sure you have a sound bite prepared for people you will most likely run into. You can be almost certain that you will come in contact with established animal rights activists, environmentalists, people who rely heavily on statistics when making a decision, people who know nothing about animal rights, and compassionate people. Do some research and have a sentence or two prepared to dish out in efforts to try to recruit that person.
- Be friendly to everyone. Activists get a bad rap. Animal rights activists get the worst rap. Many people are unaware of what an animal rights activist is. They make preconceptions that, more likely than not, are wrong. People will turn away when they see that you are promoting animal rights, some will make rude remarks, and some won't even give your cause a chance, all because they are uninformed. You can get a lot more achieved by kindly offering non-threatening information than by screaming and trying to defend your cause. You do not need to defend what you do. Fighting for animal rights is the correct thing to do, and hopefully some day everyone will come to that realization. Put on a smile and get ready to give all the information you can.
