Students Take Initiative to Start New Organizations on Campus

Students on High Point University’s campus take their passions and interests to the next level by taking the initiative to create organizations on campus to share their thoughts and ideas with the rest of the student body.

By Brittany Muldoon

            College students across the nation are searching for new ways to get involved on campus. However, it can be difficult, at first, for some students to find an organization that they can truly care about and create their own niche.

Some students may shy away from the organizations scenes because they don’t feel like they belong in anything that exists on campus already, while other students use this as an opportunity to contribute something new and creative to their campus.

This is exactly what High Point University students have done. According to High Point University's website, there are more than 60 chartered clubs and organizations that students can get involved in, and there are a few more in the process of getting their charters.
The HPU campus has recently added three organizations, the Offbeats, the Diversity Club, and The Pin Point, that were the brainchildren of current students. Each of these organizations is different from anything HPU has seen before, and the students behind them have worked hard to make their contributions to this small but lively campus.

The Offbeats

A new group has officially entered the music scene. The Offbeats is HPU’s first-ever coeducational a cappella group. 

Sophomore Nick Pierle, founder and president of the Offbeats, brought the group to campus last year after auditioning for the Toccatatones, the male a cappella group on campus. When he was not admitted into the group, one of the Toccatatones approached him with the idea to create a coed a cappella group.

Pierle saw this as an opportunity to bring something new to campus and immediately started gauging interest. He rounded up a few friends and they started holding interest meetings.

Eventually, their core group reached a size at which they would be able to hold auditions during the spring semester of 2013. Pierle said that 42 people showed up to the auditions, and out of those 42, 16 made it into the group.

According to Pierle, the hardest part of starting the Offbeats was gauging interest. He related that it fluctuates and they had a lot of people show up and commit in the beginning, and then the numbers began to dwindle as people got caught up in classwork and other things they were involved in across campus.

Once they had finished conceptualizing the group, they had to work on officially chartering it for the Student Government Association. In order to do this, they had to meet with Dr. Paul Kittle, the Dean of Students, to fill out paper work and discuss the purpose of the organization. 
According to Kittle, the Offbeats are almost finished with the process: "All their paperwork is in and we will do a charter review with them in front of the committee on Wednesday night this week." The committee Kittle refers to is the Student Life Committee, which votes on the charter of the organization to make it official at the end of the process. This last step for the Offbeats to become an official organization will occur tonight.
Pierle is pretty busy with the Offbeats. As president, he manages the behind-the-scenes aspect of scheduling performances, publicizing their events, and making sure everything within the group is going well. This is in addition to attending the three rehearsals they have scheduled each week.

Like any other college student, Pierle is very involved on campus. He serves as a Resident Assistant and as vice president of the HPU Catholic Campus Ministry. He also has a lot of classwork to take care of in addition to leading the Offbeats. 

The Offbeats performed at Rock Against Rape during Sexual Assault Awareness Week.

He says he manages his commitments “one step at a time.” He designates his nighttime hours to specific things and manages to get a lot of work done when he is on Resident Assistant duty in his dorm. 

Pierle’s favorite part of being involved in the Offbeats is the fact that it is very different from the other two a cappella groups here on campus.

“Most of the people from the other two groups are music majors, whereas for us...you name it, we probably have someone studying it either as a major or minor so it's a different group of people that don't necessarily see each other on a daily basis," said Pierle. 

Since the Offbeats have been rehearsing and performing for almost two semesters now, he hopes to join the ranks of the Petal Points and the Toccatatones and plan a spring concert to showcase the hard work they have done in their short time here on campus. He also wants to expand their reach and eventually to get their name out beyond the High Point University community.

Diversity Club

            When current junior Matt Burns started attending HPU in the fall of 2011, he noticed that there was no club dedicated to raising diversity awareness on campus.

During their freshman year, Burns and current junior Marisa Pierre tossed around the idea of starting some sort of diversity initiative on campus. He wanted to create something new that would encourage people from all types of backgrounds to come together and share their experiences.

“I was pretty active in my diversity club in high school and I went to a number of different conferences," said Burns. "I felt like I had the experience with diversity initiatives and I thought it would be a good idea to start a club.”

Burns and Pierre officially started the HPU Diversity Club during the fall semester of their sophomore year. 

Burns said the most challenging part of getting the club started was simply the length of time that it took to get all the SGA requirements finished: "You have to go to four out of the five SGA meetings so that was the reason why it took so long to start the club, and then you have to write a constitution that has to go through a number of different people."
Kittle echoes Burns' statement that the paperwork is the most difficult part: "It's always the completion of the paperwork. Everybody is excited and passionate about their purpose, but trying to get them to draft a good constitution and bylaws that sets the group up for long-term success--that is the part that takes the most work," he said. "We usually go back and forth two or three times on their documents and getting them correct so we can get them in for a vote."

In order to keep from being overwhelmed, Burns utilizes the calendar on his phone to organize his time and designate specific hours for his work. Burns also serves as a Resident Assistant, a Peer Mentor, and a student justice.

            Burns has served as the president of the club since its first active semester. He works behind the scenes to schedule events that involve the entire campus in the projects of the Diversity Club.

He said the hardest part of being in the club today is trying to publicize and raise awareness about events that they have planned. Burns said, however, that they have good attendance rates at meetings and he is happy that they have a pretty large core group of members.

 So far this semester, the Diversity Club has sponsored several events across campus, including Dear World and Open Mic nights. The Diversity Club also sponsors Talking Tuesdays, which are opportunities for students to share their thoughts and opinions, and 21 Questions, an event in which students sit in a chair and people ask them questions to get to know each other.

This was one of the promotion posters for the Thanksgiving fundraiser.

They just finished working on their Thanksgiving fundraiser, which benefitted citizens of the High Point/Greensboro, N.C., area.

            Burns’ goal at the beginning of this year was for the club to be a lot more active on campus than it was last year. He said they have already accomplished this goal as the fall semester comes to an end: “The things we've already done this first semester are double the amount we did in one year last year.”

His goals for next semester are to keep scheduling fun and interesting events, recruit new members who may want to take leadership positions, and to continue to publicize the existence of the club and the events.

As for plans for events next semester, he has a few poets scheduled to come to campus. Burns is also trying to schedule an event for influential speaker Marc Elliot next semester because he believes his unique “live and let live” message would be a valuable one to share with other HPU students.

The Pin Point

The Pin Point: Behind the Scenes: An Audio Story

            Current sophomores Brailey Lisath and Lilly Chalfant have recently introduced HPU’s very first fashion and lifestyle magazine, The Pin Point. 

            This publication is completely student-run. It features only student writers, photographers, designers, and layout artists. It is truly by the students, for the students.

            The magazine is an online publication that covers the season’s trends, whether it be clothing, music, technology, or food. The first issue came out in October and the second issue debuted online on Dec. 2, 2013.
            As for official chartering, Chalfant and Lisath have drafted a constitution and have acquired a faculty adviser. They are, however, in the very early stages of the process.

            Lisath and Chalfant, Communication majors and Media Fellows, came up with the idea for the magazine during the second semester of their freshman year when Lisath expressed her desire to work for Nylon, a well-known fashion magazine.
           “I was inspired by a lot of the magazines I look at online because a lot of the print magazines that we see today have an online version, so I was looking through one one day and thought to myself, 'why couldn't we have something like this on High Point University's campus?'" said Lisath. "I got really lucky to have a roommate that is the type of person that when we come up with an idea, we just execute it." Lisath is referring to Chalfant, her roommate and partner in this endeavor.

            Lisath serves as the Editorial Director. She has a hand in scheduling photo shoots, styling, photography, modeling, writing, and designing spreads for the articles that other staff writers submit to her.

            Chalfant, the Creative Director, works on styling, photography, writing, deciding on content, running the magazine's social media.

            Both Chalfant and Lisath are incredibly busy. Lisath works for HPU as a Wanek Center Facility Manager, is currently working on the sequel to her first published novel, "Compelled," and is preparing to study abroad next semester. She also serves as an intern for College Fashionista.

            Chalfant works as a personal care assistant for a physically disabled student on campus, is on the HPU Equestrian Team, and is also preparing to study abroad next semester. 

           They both say that it can sometimes be a struggle to manage their time between class and all their other commitments, so they make use of their calendars on their phones and computers to block off their time.

            Right now, their goals are simply to recruit more people who would be interested in working for The Pin Point and expanding their audience to reach more people on campus.

For more information and upcoming events, please visit:

The Offbeats' Official Facebook page

The Diversity Club's Official Facebook page

The Pin Point's Winter 2013 issue

The Pin Point's Official Facebook page