Starting an anime club in college

[-spike-]

I wanted to try and start an anime club at the college I will be going to and I want to see if I could get some of you suggestions. I want to make the club so that it would benifit the school, that way they school would be willing to pay for the anime we would want to view. I also wanted to make it so that if you signed up for a certin class, the school would tell you that you could join the anime club. Then we could actually discuss ways the anime was drawn or created after we watched it. These are just some of my ideas, let me know what you think and maybe some other suggestions.

[israfel]

Kent state, a college near me, has an anime club, but they are real pretentious when it comes to what anime they watch, plus they will only watch it in japanese. the whole subs are better than dubs deal. i attended one of thier meetings, and hated the way they were so closed minded and i was completely alienated. so my only advice would be to make sure you don't do the same, because i think that it's a really good idea to start something like that.

[-spike-]

Thanks for the suggestion, Ill keep that in mind. I dont like DBZ, but I would be willing to watch it if others wanted to.

[tsunami]

they tried one at the college i go to. it got started and died the next day. colleges hate to pay fees to show films especially if the club is small so make sure you have a load of people backing this up. my friend's college is better about stuff because it just has meetings with an anime library that everyone donates to.

[Homeless Joe]

you might try to examine some philosophical aspects of some anime.

[Batz Kage]

the only way I would think a college would back you was if it were part of some animation or culture class; maybe even a fiction art type of thing.

[fahad17]

u should get the school to show "Grave Of The Fireflies" as part as WW or during hums for conflict and coop. that wud be cool.

[fahad17]

u should get the school to show "Grave Of The Fireflies" as part as WW or during hums for conflict and coop. that wud be cool.

[dailyplanet]

I joined signed up for the anime club at my college and never heard from them again. It was very small and had a limited selection i.e. Escaflowne, Mononoke, Maison Ikkoku, and some Ranma mangas. By that time, I was interested in more recent animes like Naruto, ROD TV, FMA and such and so I didn't care for those. I got my daily dose of anime through fansubs (I LOVE Bit torent ).

Anyway, if you want to get any club started in college, it's slow and takes a lot work and persistence. I've had some experience as I'm president of my college's pro-life organization. If it's new, you're going to need to write up a constitution and submit a contract to the Dean of Student Affairs (or whatever your college calls it) for approval. The appropriations committee will usually give you some funds, but you have to ask at their annual meetings.

And that's only really the beginning. Just make sure you have enough people interested and that there's someone to help you out with all of this. Either way you're going to have to stay organized and assign positions and such.

If you want to publicize your club flyers are the way to go (and tabling too!).

Ok, well I hope that at least gives you some insight into the effort you're going to have to put if you're actually serious about forming this club and if you were only brain-storming, well I suppose this can be some food for thought .

[Nina182B]

You're starting an anime club! That's great! My friends and I started an Anime Club at Notre Dame about two years ago. Not a lot of kids at that school even knew what anime was so we had a really hard time recruiting. Putting up posters helped but not so much.. It was all done pretty much through word of mouth and getting other members to bring their friends. Our school didn't really give us that much funding. The first year, we had about $400 and the second about $600 since it's up to how many members you have that actually paid their dues.

I also e-mailed a lot of companies like adv, bandai, and some of the smaller companies. (Pretty much ran a search on google for anime companies and e-mailed them all) I had about 4 or 5 responses saying they were willing to give our club free stuff (old anime/trailers/couple of episodes from a series) providing we could prove that we indeed had an anime club at our school. I would let you know which of those companies were but I graduated last semester and gave all that info to the president of the club.

My suggestion for you is to use your money wisely. We kept buying R1's from regular retailers like Best Buy which isn't really the cheapest way to go sometimes. I wanted to use Ebay but not a lot of members trusted that. Also, the showings that brought in the most people are the ones with FOOD Students will go to a showing without knowing what they're gonna see as long as they've got pizza or something. We would sometimes have sushi, pizza or chinese food after a showing and it's a great way to get to know other members. Another important thing is your anime listserve. There is usually a "club night" at our school in the beginning of the semesters where all the clubs are present and all the kids come there to sign up for clubs they're interested in. Get anyone you can to sign your sheet to get their e-mails! Everyone's always busy and being able to e-mail kids who are interested two or three days before a showing helps a lot! Hmmm what else... Try to make your anime showing times and days consistent so it's easier for members to remember. We usually had 4 or 5 episodes of a series shown every Wednesday night, same time same place and a movie shown Saturday afternoon. And since you love anime, I have no doubt you will try your best to make others get into watching anime as well. Good luck! Give us an update of your club later on.

ND Anime club website:
http://www.nd.edu/~anime

[kakomu]

Apparently, the anime club at my school uses an auditorium and watches anime fansubs from a laptop. I'm not interested in hanging around what are most likely the disgusting types you'd see at a Anime con.

[evilomar]

I'm as open minded as they come, and back in 1996, I went to an anime club at the local University. Well.... umm I really tried to enjoy myself, but most of those people were, to put it nicely: pathetic, and were freaking me out. They looked like your typical Everquest junkie, the one with the radioactive skin because he hasn't left his parents basement in months, that and at the time most women didn't know what anime was, so there was a lack of honeys in this club. I'm sure anime clubs have gotten better with age, but I like to watch anime by myself most of the time, unless of course its hentai.

[-spike-]

Thanks for all the help guys, props to Nina. Sounds like fun. My school only has about 300 people attending, and most are geeks like me. So hopefuly it should work out.