Welcome to The Phoenix’s weekly digest. Every week during the quarter, you can expect our writers’ takes on some campus happenings.

This week, Alec Stein returns to share his insights for RSOs at the University after talking to the president of Furries for UChicago.

If the Student Government deals in opaque affairs of non-consequence, what hope do any of us have of affecting UChicago itself? Joining Furries for UChicago, apparently. I don’t like Elmo any more than the next person (although I am abnormal in my affection for Cookie Monster). Yet, last week, I found myself interviewing the leader of the furry club here at the University. 

The experiences of this small RSO encapsulate the raison d’etre of an RSO, its struggles through adolescence, and the ad hoc nature of RSO management at this school. More than anything, they remind us to support our small institutions because it’s RSO activity and all its peculiarities that, beyond the Core and College, bind us together as a student body. Quaint as they seem, RSOs are the primary way for most students to “pitch back in” and make an impact on UChicago that might last beyond their truncated time here. 

Now, turning to the furries in particular, this is an RSO in its nascent phase, built around common interests and community but not yet hallowed or self-perpetuating. 

What is a furry? According to the president of the club, Chris Deng, it’s for those who don’t mind the term, and simply “like anthropomorphic animals,” whether on the screen or in furson. Most, if not all, have a fursona: an animal persona that they identify with. The club started as a connecting point—a Discord server—a place to feel the presence of a “wholesome” community that perhaps had been invisible before. Of course,  the temptations of the  Midwest FurFest furry convention made the transition to an RSO inevitable for financial reasons.

Putting aside his club’s unique theme, Deng’s experience reflects what many RSO leaders have faced: management and bureaucracy that are necessary but detract from engagement with the community itself. This is most relevant in the smallest RSOs, where it can often be one person taking on all the bureaucratic and logistical tasks to keep the RSO alive. The most institutionalized RSOs are those where leadership can simply be a cog in the machine, where the departure of a talented leader might weaken but never kill the RSO. However, for Furries at UChicago and many more RSOs, that structure relies on remarkably few people and their hope of building something enduring.

It doesn’t help that the Blueprint platform and physical flyers are the only “town square” by which an RSO can showcase itself. The University must promote RSO visibility and cross-pollination. The remarkable diversity of our RSOs needs to be seen beyond word of mouth and the four or five bulletin boards people actually see (through an RSO-focused Instagram account, for example). Each RSO alone is not indispensable, not even Furries at UChicago, but the health of our community and social scene depends on our underlying RSO environment. 

Ultimately, it is up to us as students to create and maintain these eccentric spaces. Without them, we may as well throw whatever “culture” UChicago has to the wayside and lie down to the stampede of marketable skills.

Stay tuned for next week’s edition. In the meantime, if you have any thoughts, disagreements, or words of support, we want to hear them! Write to us at thechicagophoenix@gmail.com.