A new category system is being used by the Office of Student Activities (OSA) to help strengthen Georgia Southern University’s student organizations.

In the past, coordinators working for the OSA were assigned to organizations by certain sections of the alphabet. Now organizations will be grouped into three categories depending on their variations.

“It is not something that they necessary would or wouldn’t want to op into, it’s just the reality of being a recognized student organization here,” said Justin Jeffery, activities director in the OSA. “The minute you’re an active organization you’re part of a category.“

Earlier this March the OSA gave one leader from each organization a survey to determine which category their organization fell into.

“What this means to us is that the category-one organizations are going to be those lower risk organizations, lower numbers, lower amount of events that means they are assigned to one of our activities coordinator, and he or she knows that he or she is only working with those types of organizations,” said Jeffery.

Category two has the largest amount of organizations within it.

“As far as I know they were in contact with us but a lot of it was not beneficial due to the unique nature of our organization,” said Tyler Stone, president of the Student Eagle Club.

The Student Eagle Club has over 800 members.

The Student Eagle Club is one organization in this category and they have been working well with the OSA so far, said Leo Young, category two activities coordinator for the OSA.

“I know a lot of what they’ve done with this new classification system is to help the smaller organizations [to] get their name out more, and provide them with tables and things like that,” Stone said.

“[There are] a lot of organizations that I am the activities coordinator for so I can’t speak to every single one of them individually. [The category system] allows me to reach out to them and say, ‘You’re a category two, here’s some things that can be helpful for you,’” Young said.

After the March survey the leader and one officer was required to attend a two-hour renewal workshop in the month of April. If an organization missed the workshop they have an opportunity to make it up.

Young said, “We will be offering renewal make-ups in the month of September every Friday. At those they will be organized just how they were in the spring semester, around their category.”