Upon entering room 221 of the Classroom Building, a message on the white board reads ‘Welcome to Political Science Club’ while jokingly beginning the meeting with the comment you can’t spell political without lit!
Potential members arrive and the officers begin introductions, introducing themselves, and then asking the attendees their name, their grade, their major and a recurring awkward moment that frequently happens to them. This was the start of the first Political Science RSO meeting.
Much of the meeting was simply an overview of things that are and things that are yet to come. Advised by UW professor Jason McConnell, the RSO had been inactive for three years until the club was reformed this semester.
With the recent Political Science Club revival, the club is taking part in a few special events coming up in the near future, such as co-hosting the Honorable German Consulate General, helping with the #ElectHer workshop being run by a consultant from the non-profit, nonpartisan political organization Running Start and meeting New York attorney Erica Dubno who has been involved in some Supreme Court cases.
“I am excited about all of the events that can come from this club,” Karly McQuitty, treasurer of the Political Science RSO, said. “They’re the events that I would want to attend on campus, not the ones that I think, ‘Well, maybe I should go to that,’ but rather something that I actually care about.”
Events are not the only thing that the RSO is focused on. Being welcoming to all UW students, undergraduate students and graduate students, plays a large role in the values of the RSO.
In case debates rise to the surface, Kyle Sabourin, a senior Political Science major, acts as the moderator, someone who keeps the peace in an official debate. To the officers of the Political Science RSO, being welcoming is an effective way to make connections, and have a successful RSO as a result.
“Our advisor was like, ‘One of the most important things in college is connection with your fellow students and undergraduates,’ and that kind of makes college tolerable,” Collen Floyd, president of the RSO, said. Not everyone has that picture-perfect college experience. The way to get through it is connection. [Our advisor] said, ‘If you can make people happy every week, make people laugh, and then be able to get cool stuff done, then there you go! You have a successful club.’”
One of the facets of the RSO that is different from some other political RSOs on campus, such as Young Republicans, Young Democrats, or any third-party groups is that the Political Science RSO is a nonpartisan political group. As a growing organization, the RSO wants to make people feel welcome so that people with different opinions come and feel free to talk about their views and opinions.
“I think that a really important part of that [nonpartisanship], is that we want everyone to feel welcome coming here, and if we weren’t nonpartisan, that would be very hard to make happen, because people would feel like they weren’t able to come and talk about anything, and that they were just gonna get shut down,” Steph Skinner, vice president of the RSO, said.
