Thursday evening, the Union Senate is sponsoring a community forum to discuss a bylaw passed in December that has significantly revised the club chartering process. This comes after several club leaders complained the bylaw was not publicized or discussed enough among the Brandeis community before its passage.Previously, a group needed signatures from at least 10 students interested in being club members in order to charter a new club. Under the new bylaw, 200 student signatures are required to charter a club, and at least 20 of those signatories must commit to active involvement following chartering.

The standard for being a recognized club that is ineligible for Allocations Board funding remains five student signatures. Recognized clubs, however, are eligible to appear before the Union Senate to request funds.

Class of 2005 Senator Michael Corwin said the Union Senate felt more clubs were being chartered than the Allocation Board's limited funding could allow for.

An online Justice article and e-mails to club leaders and the general Brandeis community from the Union Senate informed students of the new bylaw. Daniel Silverman '05, one of the developers of the myBrandeis website, created an online forum for students to discuss the new changes. He said the forum received 40 responses from 28 unique users over a three-day period.

In addition, Silverman created an online poll for the myBrandeis website. The poll, which ran from Dec. 8 to Dec. 20 received 216 unique votes. He said 78.2 percent of the respondents believed the new policy was wrong, while 21.8 percent approved of the new changes. Silverman noted that even with 216 votes, the poll only attracted 16 more people than the 200 now required to charter a club.

Club leaders have had mixed reactions to the new policy, but those posting on the online forum held predominantly negative views of the new bylaw. "Two hundred signatures is an outrageous number. That's fully half the amount needed for a student referendum. At this pace, why not just have a referendum on every club and have the students vote each time?" said Joel Fried '03, founder of the Brandeis Official Readers' Guild (BORG).

Other club leaders support the motives behind the new bylaw. Matt DiCarlo '03, president of OTAKU Anime Club, said in the past, "it was pretty ridiculous to see how easy it is to get a club started on this campus." He, however, added that 200 is a very large number, and said he feels the signature requirement could be dropped to 50 or 60 students.

Many club leaders also said they feel the new bylaw will not effectively alleviate the current lack of club funding. "The new club chartering guidelines will only stop new clubs from being formed, not from current clubs requesting too much money," Fried said. "One of the reasons that so much money is being requested is that the general consensus is that you need to request twice as much of anything as you want in order to get what you'd like. If everybody actually asked for what they really needed and wanted, the requests would be cut in half."

The new bylaw does have a clause allowing prospective clubs having difficulty obtaining 200 signatures to submit a letter to the Executive Senator, explaining the situation. The club's chartering bid can then be placed on the Union Senate agenda at the Executive Senator's discretion.

"As long as the potential club is not associated with an unpopular political agenda, most people would sign the petition out of common courtesy," said Mira Meyerovich '03, one of BORG's founding members. "(But), if the club is associated with an unpopular agenda," she added, "those are the sorts of clubs Brandeis should be encouraging.

Many club leaders said they believe the Union Senate could have done a better job of informing the community of the proposed changes before the bylaw was passed. "In theory, the Senate is always discussing laws and they hold forums on them every time in the form of the open Union Senate meetings," said Jeffrey Morrow '03, president of Boris' Kitchen and the Brandeis Ensemble Theatre. "But, the reality is that if the club leaders really had the time to sit in on every Senate meeting, we wouldn't really have time to be club leaders."

Ian Adams '05, an active member of several clubs, said he feels the forum should have been held before the bylaw was passed rather than retroactively.

A campus-wide e-mail signed by seven senators, however, said, "The bylaw was passed after a staggering number of hours debating, tweaking and polishing the wording. It was not a hasty decision." These senators also encouraged students to attend Union Senate meetings to discuss or respond to any concerns they may have.

The forum will be held Thursday at 7 p.m. in the International Lounge in upstairs Usdan.