Formation of the Worcester Polytechnic Institute Cooking Club

You would think that Worcester Polytechnic Institute would already have a cooking club for the students.

Apparently, one does not exist.

This is a problem that a group of Freshman in the WPI class of 2022 are looking to fix. Unanimously unsatisfied with the food that Pulse on Dining provides, the idea for a cooking club came to life in one of the Morgan Hall common areas.

A group of friends were watching television, when they came across the Food Network channel. After seeing all the delicious food on the T.V, the idea sparked up to start a club that will bring them better food. After much discussion, the idea Cooking Club was born.

To start a new club at WPI there are a few housekeeping items that must be taken care of first. The club must have a type of government, usually meaning a president, secretary, etc. Once the initial power struggles are over, the club must start writing a constitution. This includes what the club is about, when they will meet, how the government is set up, and any other important information.

The constitution of the Cooking Club is being worked on by Emily Bubencik, the Secretary of the cooking club. She says, “Right now we are in the middle of revision number two. The constitution should be done by the end of the week.”

Other than having a constitution, the club must prove that there is an interest within the general student body for the club to exist. This requires getting at least 50 signatures from students on campus. This shows that people would be interested and sets a scale on how big the club might be.

Originally, the founders of the cooking club thought the organization would be relatively small-scale. This changed when they amassed over 250 signatures, which is a number that keeps growing. Having these many signatures has its benefits and drawbacks, as it means more funding for the club, but makes organizing logistics much harder.

There are not many places freshman can cook on the WPI campus. None of the dorms have a kitchen, and the fanciest cooking machine that are allowed in the dorm rooms are microwaves.

The initial idea for the location of cooking club meetings was the Oasis house. Upon inspection however, the kitchen allows for around four people using it at once. This is one of the biggest problems that is being worked on by the Cooking Club before it can come to fruition.

Clubs on campus must also create an operating budget, to see what the total costs of running the organization will be. This allows the College to see how much money can go to the organization. The Cooking Club has yet to create a budget, as it is still in the early stages.

After all of the required housekeeping items are taken care of, the Cooking Club will be able to host interest meetings. These meeting will give a true showing of how many people would attend the Cooking Club events and really shine some light on a few unknowns.

Doing all the required tasks will require a lot of time, especially because the leaders of the Cooking Club are all busy with classes, and the tasks are not very simple to complete. Hopefully the club will start hosting meetings by the end of the year.

“Right now due dates are pending, but we are in collaboration with Professor Lewis and hope we can get things running by the end of the academic year.” Explained Bubencik.

If you personally want to help the cooking club become an actual organization on campus, the best thing you can do is sign the interest sheet and attend the interest meetings when those start taking place. Note that you must be a student at WPI to support the club in this way. Other than that, the only thing most people can do is wait for all the organizational items to be taken care of in the meantime.