Yes, there really is an RSO for everyone
Five Recognized Student Organizations to know in the College
Japanese Animation Society
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Website: jas.uchicago.edu | Save the Date: UChi-Con, Jan. 25, 2025 | Contact: Discord, Instagram
“Please do not swing weapons around.”
That’s just one of the rules of the annual UChi-Con, the annual flagship event of the University of Chicago’s Japanese Animation Society (UCJAS). Founded in 1994, UCJAS is the “big college version of anime club.” Throughout the school year, UCJAS hosts weekly meetings and anime screenings, but spends most of the Autumn Quarter preparing for UChi-Con, a free anime convention that brought nearly 2,000 attendees last year.
It’s grown so large, including an artist alley, costume contest, a maid café, screenings, and discussions, that the RSO is working on booking event space in the Rubenstein Forum—in addition to Ida Noyes Hall—to accommodate UChi-Con, set this year for Jan. 25, 2025.
“An anime convention is a special place because you almost get to forget what the outside world is like,” said Jonathan Li, who serves as the RSO’s co-president with fellow student Yuzhou Wang. “You get to surround yourself with anime, other people who like anime, and see stuff you would only be able to see online. It’s a very special experience to just walk through artist alley and to see the wide variety of cosplays.”
In Spring Quarter, the club funds a trip to Anime Central (ACen), the biggest anime convention in the Midwest held annually in Rosemont, Ill. For the past two years, UCJAS swept first-place honors in the ACen Masquerade, the convention’s performance competition, and hopes to make it a three-peat in 2025.
The RSO meets weekly on Wednesday evenings. To get involved, students should join the UCJAS Discord to keep up to date on upcoming events, or just chat on anime topics.
“We’re always open to anyone interested in anime and we get a wide variety of folks from different backgrounds who are interested in the subject,” Li added.
Life of the Mic
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No comedic experience is necessary to join the College’s student-run stand-up comedy club, Life of the Mic. Because as the saying goes, “You have to start somewhere.”
“There is not a single person I can think of who regularly comes to our meetings who had done comedy before—for most people, it’s not like they attend UChicago as aspiring comedians,” noted Josh Kinder, Life of the Mic’s co-president. But once you join, getting up in front of a crowd and cracking jokes is easier than you think.
That’s because of the format of the club, started in 2019. Kindler, a former ‘emcee of sorts’ at his small high school, attended a meeting out of curiosity. He remembers he didn’t say a word, until at a second meeting, a member encouraged him to simply tell a story. “I just told this story about a ridiculous encounter I had at summer camp, and it turned out to be the way to get me started,” he recalled.
Life of the Mic’s weekly meetings give members a chance to test and modify jokes, talk about comedians they like, or simply listen, and laugh. The meetings serve as practice sessions for the club’s main events, which include quarterly open mics hosted at Hallowed Grounds (generally held fifth or sixth week) and its capstone event, a quarterly showcase hosted at a local theater (planned at the Definition Theatre this year). But before you take the stage, you have a chance to hear feedback, rework your jokes, and see how they land.
As it turns out, telling jokes on stage in front of your friends—with confidence already built—is a lot easier than doing it in front of strangers, which adds to the fun, Kinder said. Plus, the diversity of the comedy styles is also what makes Life of the Mic distinctly ‘UChicago.’
“One of the best parts about the club is we have a ton of different people with different dispositions and comedic styles, and also lots of people who you wouldn’t stereotypically say would be ‘stand-up comedic types,’” Kindler said. “They’re not all super loud, not all cracking jokes, but some have this awkward, almost uncomfortable humor that you don’t always expect.”
To get involved, students should join the Life of the Mic’s email list host to keep up to date on meetings, or follow @uchicagolofeofthemic on Instagram and send a message.
UChicago Harm Reduction Project
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Website: uchrp.weebly.com | Contact: Instagram, info@uchrp.org
In 2022, there were more opioid-related overdose deaths in Chicago than homicide and traffic crashes combined, according to the Chicago Department of Health (CDPH).
Eshan Dosani decided he was going to do something about it. He started the UChicago Harm Reduction Project (UCHRP) in the fall of 2022, putting up flyers around campus in search of others interested in forming an organization dedicated to helping address the opioid crisis.
Since then, the RSO has grown and distributed more than 5,000 kits of naloxone—proven extremely effective at reducing overdose fatalities—around the city and set up over a dozen free public naloxone boxes across the South and West sides. Using data from the CDPH and collaborating with various organizations like Chicago Recovery Alliance, UCHRP was able to pinpoint the locations of overdose hotspots where the naloxone is needed most.
“We now have about two dozen members working on various projects dedicated to preventing avoidable deaths from overdose and helping people gain access to support like treatment and housing,” Dosani said.
In 2023, the UCHRP expanded its reach and started a project in Berea, Kentucky, after learning about the overdose and eviction crisis from its colleagues at the Appalachian Community Meal Project. Connecting with local organizers, the RSO answered the need by raising funds to help Berea residents make security deposits on housing.
“We saw families going from living in motels, afraid of being put out onto the street when their funds ran out, to seeing those same families in stable housing, able to focus on improving their lives and the lives of their children,” Dosani said.
That small project inspired something greater with the Appalseed Fund, a joint collaboration with local organizations that has raised more than $20,000 (and counting) in housing grants. This September, UCHRP is back in Berea, working with partners to implement more grants, conduct outreach for potential grantees, and helping residents move into their new homes.
Interested students can learn more by following the UCHRP Instagram or checking out the UCHRP website, or by attending a meeting.
“At UCHRP, we have something for everyone, with a range of action items in our different working groups,” said Ruby Velez, a rising junior and board member, who noted the different interest areas related to medicine/health (Narcan distribution and trainings), public service (policy team that pushes for legislative action), and organizing (trips to Above & Beyond or Chicago Recovery Alliance). “There are opportunities to start your own working group, or just come to a few outreach events—you can really get involved as much or as little as you’d like.”
CMAC: University of Chicago Glee Club
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Website: cmacsings.com | Contact: Instagram, Facebook
No, the University of Chicago’s premier low-voice ensemble is in fact, not, like the show Glee.
For the past 20 years, CMAC: University of Chicago Glee Club has, however, filled a unique niche for UChicago students looking for a student-run music ensemble that performs a wide diversity of music while also creating an equally important social space.
No longer called the Chicago Men’s A Cappella—the RSO lost its gender exclusivity nearly a decade ago, despite retaining the CMAC acronym—the ensemble performs low-voice (think tenor-tenor-bass-bass) music in various genres, from UChicago anthems to religious songs to classical and folk pieces. Though student-run, the group does hire a director, a tradition kept since the Glee Club’s origins, which involved the inclusion of founding and longtime director, Bruce Tammen. While a student in the College, current Director Burke Morton, AB’95, studied voice and conducting with Tammen.
Ben Kreiswirth, CMAC’s president, said the group is always looking to expand—it makes it easier to learn more challenging songs with more numbers—and is open to a variety of skill levels.
“You basically just need to have some sense of pitch,” Kreiswirth said. “Obviously, it’s great if you can read sheet music, but if not, you’ll learn along the way.”
CMAC rehearses twice a week, performs a concert every quarter, and also does a variety of gigs (and are always looking or more) like the UChicago Athletics Hall of Fame, the South Side Pie Challenge in Hyde Park, and even travels annually to other cities (Washington, D.C., St. Louis, San Francisco are a few past trips) to perform.
CMAC holds auditions during the start of each quarter, but anyone can request an audition by emailing exec@cmacsings.com to see if they might be a good fit for the group.
For Kreiswirth, membership in the RSO goes beyond just performing.
“The group has been very important for me,” Kreiswirth said. “It’s my main non-academic group, where I’ve met a lot of my good friends, and it’s my main way of sort of a forced relaxing on Tuesdays and Thursdays—a break from studying.
“You can just get locked up in the library for five hours every evening, but it’s more useful to spend a little time away (from your studies) doing something fun.”
University of Chicago Transit Enthusiasts and Explorers
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Website: transit.rso.uchicago.edu | Contact: Instagram, Discord, Blueprint
Does the idea of catching the Chicago Transit Authority’s annual holiday train excite you?
Then there is a place for you at one of the University of Chicago’s newest registered student organizations: the UChicago Transit Enthusiasts and Explorers (UCTEE). That’s just one of the many activities the transportation-savvy group did in its first year as an official RSO in 2023, and its leaders are excited about what’s to come.
“Chicago is a transit city—there’s no doubt about it,” said the club’s president, Dariel Cruz Rodriguez. “From Metra to CTA to Pace to Divvy and everything in between, Chicago makes it incredibly hard to deny the fact that transit fuels the spirit of this city. It gets people to work, to their families, and yes—to college.”
When the club wasn’t hanging out with Santa and cruising on the CTA’s elusive and festively lit Green Line holiday train throughout the city, it also hosted speaker events, like a data science career talk with a transit community activist and cybersecurity analyst Brandon McFadden. The data whiz for the grassroots group Commuters Take Action chatted with students last Spring about how much data actually goes into the planning of the city’s transit.
“From everything to which bus stops to skip, to how efficient trains are running to where the next bus line will be built, all comes from data-informed decisions,” Cruz Rodriguez said about the event, which was later featured by Streetsblog Chicago.
Other events included group excursions to various landmarks, like Pullman Historical Park, the Chicago Botanical Garden, and a trek to the Illinois Railway Museum in Union, Ill., to visit America’s largest railway museum.
The RSO currently has around 40 members and Cruz Rodriguez said they are working on plans to host more talks with folks from the CTA, in addition to longer excursions on Amtrak.
“Join us—at worst, you’ll get to go on a free trip somewhere in a Chicagoland with a group of transit-minded peers, at best, you’ll find your next internship or even some new friends along the way,” he said.
He also added a transit tip: The CTA holiday train always has a run number of 1225 (for Dec. 25), so entering that number into transitchicago.com will help you determine its next stop. “Ding-dong, ding-dong, doors closing. Garfield is next!”
—by: Nicole Watkins