Jason,
Are you prepared to take over your campus this Spring with the ideas of liberty?
Planning your chapter’s first activism event is essential to get going on the right foot. More than likely, your university will tell you that you are not allowed to reserve space on campus to put up a recruitment table or reserve university classrooms to host events until your group is officially recognized.
This often leaves students in a trap: How can you recruit a certain number of members to join your chapter in order to gain recognition if your school won’t let you put up a recruitment table?
The truth is that universities are out of touch with how successful student groups are created, and so you can never let their official policies slow your chapter down.
Even if you cannot reserve a recruitment table or a classroom as you are getting started, it is vital that you get your new members involved in an activism event right away to keep them committed to your chapter and to establish an image on campus to identify more supporters.
If you do not give your chapter members a reason to stay engaged at the beginning of the semester, they will quickly leave your ranks and join a more exciting club.
Hundreds of chapters host events without school recognition every semester! We have the tactics for you to do so too without making a bad name for your chapter with your university, but the bottom line is that you have to never let your university inhibit the growth of your YAL chapter – ever! 1. Sign up your friends.
Although universities claim that you must have a certain number of members, there is no way for them to know who is or is not active in your club. In order to get through the arbitrary red tape, consider having personal friends sign up as members of your chapter to meet the school’s requirement. This might even be a way for you to get people in your personal network committed!
2. Use YAL’s sample constitution.
This is a template, and it will save yourself time. Find it here: www.yaliberty.org/constitution.
3. Don’t waste time looking for a libertarian professor to be your academic advisor.
Any professor will do to serve the role of your advisor since they will likely only have to sign off on minor paperwork for your chapter. You can always keep your eyes open for pro-liberty professors to replace your initial advisor later on, but getting school recognition takes priority over that.
These steps will help you gain recognition faster, but it may still take enough time to be processed through your university to slow you down. Remember – never wait for school recognition to start your activism!
The only way you’ll get new recruits – whether you have a table or not – is by actively approaching students and getting them to sign up to attend your next meeting or event. All you really need for recruitment, table or not, is a clipboard with sign-up sheets.
Once you have applied for your materials, all you need to do is to seek out and approach as many students as you can, briefly explain what YAL is, and ask them to sign up so that you can follow up with them about attending your next meeting.
This is the exact same process as tabling, just without the actual table! You can get recruits in a well-trafficked area on campus, by approaching students in the cafeteria or library, or start a conversation with them just about anywhere on campus.
If you do not directly ask for them to sign up, they will not do it… period.
You have a constitutional right to clipboard without a standing structure on any public university campus. And even if you are at a private college, and you don’t yet have recognition, the vast majority of schools do not enforce their policies that state you can’t recruit until you are recognized.
Here is the key phrase to remember: “Ask for forgiveness, not permission!”
If you’re administration tries to shut down your clip boarding efforts, contact us immediately as you may have a chance to create a Fight for Free Speech campaign on your school to reform its unconstitutional policies.
The bottom line is this: the table doesn’t get recruits: you do! A proactive attitude and a clipboard will go farther than a lazy YAL member behind a recruitment table any day of the week.
You simply cannot wait until you have school recognition to start building your chapter.
When your administration tries to put up red tape, don’t get discouraged and don’t make excuses: spread liberty! That’s what you signed up with YAL to do, so don’t claim that “you just can’t build your chapter” on your campus until you are recognized: that’s total bull!
Are you really going to let the centralized, bureaucratic departments of your campus keep you from spreading the message of liberty? Follow these safe and simple strategies, and you will build an amazing chapter in no time.
The activism experts at YAL are here to help you build a beast of a YAL chapter no matter what campus climate you are dealing with. Build a watertight plan with your regional director by applying to host your Membership Drive right now!
For liberty,
Daniel Taylor
Deputy National Field Director
Young Americans for Liberty
WeedPress: The Paper Trail 
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