Frustrated with RPI activities/club sports access for a freshman

Colleges and Universities A-Z Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
1

I’m beginning to think that RPI is full of kids who think their crap doesn’t smell, or perhaps they just hate freshmen. Son has signed up for various activities, and most of them took his email address and never email back. Why the freak have a sign-up sheet if you won’t contact those who sign up? And his dorm mates don’t do any sports or activities, the only way he has gotten into any activities is through friends in his major who are in another dorm. The RA and LA seem useless at best; and we had read that there was a LA per floor, but it is one LA for the entire building as far as he knows. Isn’t the RA supposed to help get freshmen in particular involved in activities, like remind people of deadlines and have sign-up sheets? That’s what happened when I was in college.

The club teams my son was interested in either a) have very misogynist and racist webpages and behavior at practices games (I’d be thrown off CC if I gave examples of their behavior), or b) don’t show up to freshman events and then finally when they showed up at the activities fair, basically said nothing about tryouts other than “give your email” and then never emailed.

I’m trying to figure out if fraternities are the issue, because the one club sport has a president and vice president from the same frat. And the president of the club team doesn’t answer emails, so it’s not like there was no attempt to make sure he wasn’t missed by accident.

How can these club sports run below board but still use the university’s name? I just don’t get it. Conversely, club hockey is really organized: http://clubhockey.union.rpi.edu/home/

Anyone have experience with this at RPI? Is the best bet for him to sign up as an individual for intramurals and then just see where he ends up? It’s kind of daunting that ostensibly there is the RPI Union which has some kind of standards, but then individual clubs can do whatever they want and insulate themselves from new members that aren’t “connected”.

Part of me says “their loss” especially for his best sport which he plays in the summer with varsity college players, but part of me is pissed off that this might be the rule for four years if he doesn’t join a frat, let alone the frat that his best sport is associated with. Or is this just a series of coincidences and frats aren’t inculcated into club sports and activities at RPI?

2

Let me guess your S’s best sport is Lacrosse?

3

Don’t they publicize turnout time? If you get no e-mail response, can’t you just show up?

4

I see RPI has IM leagues (I googled RPI intramurals). Then I clicked through and found, for example, IM soccer with two different leagues. I clicked on one of the leagues and it listed the teams, each with a button that said ‘join the team’. I assume your son got this far but didn’t make progress beyond that? I would suggest he look over the schedule and show up at a game and try to figure out who is running the team. Or ask any player. IM leagues are usually friendly and low Key. As far as non-sports clubs, if they have a website with a meeting schedule, he should just show up.

At my D’s school, they had a sign-up day, I don’t know if they have had any special activity day since then. I don’t know how club sign ups work at RPI. I was in a club there as a grad student, but I just showed up. That was a long time ago…

I’m sorry this has been difficult. I know kids there who are in different clubs and organizations, so it must be hit or miss. I know these experiences can enrich student life. I hope he gets this worked out.

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Yes, they had a sign-up day. He signed up for a few things, no response. I’m feeling like it is as it was when professors used to give out paper syllabi, they ended up in the trash as the students left the room, if not on the floor. Trashing a list of “recruits”.

And something I found creepy; they let faculty and staff play intramural sports with and against undergrads? I mean, I know that grad students are usually allowed to play with undergrads, but where I teach, anything for faculty and staff is separate from undergrads and grad students (unless there is a special faculty/student event).

I’m hoping he can get signed up early for the spring, maybe glom on to his friend’s teams. Or look for a high division team that is looking for individuals - at least they have divisions so maybe he can avoid complete duffer.

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My husband played in a basketball league along with professors. I actually think it’s a nice experience. It helps build rapport, allows students to feel more comfortable with professors, etc. I wouldn’t have a problem with that. I guess the only issue for me would be if the leagues were all male.

I agree it’s not right that no one from the clubs he signed up with contacted him. That seems odd. Probably not indicative of RPI as a whole. Good luck to him!

7

RPI is a rough school for extra curriculars I am finding out. This is my first semester here as a 25 year old transfer pursuing a second bachelor’s.

The Men’s club soccer try out was horribly publicized and terribly run. There were a number of kids who only received 5 minutes of play time for what was a 2 hour try out. The process very heavily favored returning players to no real surprise. But when there are 8-9 players standing around with clip boards not taking notes and just talking and socializing about parties and such, you really can’t take the the club serious and expect them to be looking at players. I had an awful try out but it was so disorganized that its no wonder the RPI team never seems to make it out of conference play into play offs.

The best/most organized clubs tend to be related to be the career or profession of a student and/or design competition organizations. The next best organized seem to be the purely nerdy for fun groups like Magic, board games, anime club, etc etc. I get emails from a ton of these different clubs even though I don’t go to most of them.

I also tried signing up with an IM team for soccer through a friend, and the captain for whatever reason has yet to approve me for three games now and there is nothing I can do but resend my requests.

The only thing that works great here is the career department. Everything else really kind of sucks to be honest. Its very much a survival to get a good job school. Everything else is sort of on the back burner it seems like. Heck, it even took the school a month and a half to figure out how to distribute lockers again in the union.

The worst part about it is, at least for soccer, there are no accessible community leagues nearby for sports that I can find. I have yet to come across a community park that offers adult league sports.

Its just not a great school for these things from what I understand. Its also the reason school bleeds students to schools like Case Western and such. Kids come here because they want the elite academic reputation and possibility of having a great engineering job, or because they live in the area. Kids leave here because Troy isn’t fun, the extracurricular activities are okay at best, and if you decide to not be an engineer, there is probably a ton of different better schools to attend and have a better college experience.

In short, I gave up all physical activity to focus on academics here. That is okay for me because it is my second bachelor’s degree, and I had a solid college experience at Texas A&M. I don’t know that I would be happy here as a freshman at 18 years old though. The best tip I can offer is the one you seem to already grasp, he needs to make friends and find a group he really enjoys being around and plan his social/sports needs around them. Otherwise he si relying on people he doesn’t know and that more often than not will get him no where here.

8

I would take my response with a grain of salt. At 25 its harder for me break into clubs and cliques than it will be for your son. I think after he gets a semester or two under his belt he’ll have the system figured out and be getting what he wants out of the school. But for me, my experience has been the same as his so far and its been disappointing.

9

How frustrating and disappointing. Hope it turns around for your son and he can be involved in some of the activities he wants.

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@MechanicalFox Afrin’s is the big indoor soccer place. It’s not too far, but you would need to drive there. We are not a soccer family, so I know no details. But, I do know adults who play there.

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This thread is old, but these weren’t mentioned and might be helpful. There’s the Circle K club which is a service club that undergrads, grads, and profs are members. There’s also the A-P-O co-ed service fraternity that has an office in the Union. APO is really nice for undergrads because a senior member of the fraternity works with newbies, and they have an office in the Union with an area to meet and hang out so students can get out of their room and talk to others. As far as I know, just about everyone who pledges gets in. Both Circle K and A-P-O are very active with many volunteer opportunities throughout the community during the week for which members can sign up, as well as weekly meetings.

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My son did finally get to play intermural soccer, he had to look up contact info for a freshman that he was in orientation with, and that guy managed to get onto a team that wasn’t full, and get my son on it. He enjoys it but it is like his cultural center team was - skill level was not that good.

It’s clear from the list of men’s club soccer players that most are with a certain frat. I don’t think he’ll break in unless he rushes, and he doesn’t plan to rush.

At least also he is playing semi-pro soccer in the summer, so he is looking forward to that, and now at least he has some practice.

It also sounds like not attending the men’s club soccer tryout might have been dodging a bullet. It is really really sad that the men’s club team has the RPI name, and is in the national association of club soccer teams, but has no accountability to have fair tryouts or be anything other than the peccadillo of a frat.

Thanks for all your responses!