After a lack of communication with the Red Cross parent organization and school sponsor Jeffrey Kear, the campus Red Cross club has been shut down. Officers and previous Red Cross club members plan to start fresh next year with an organized plan.

The Red Cross is an auxiliary student form of the parent Red Cross which operates nationally and in local field offices while a student organization on campus works with and supports them.

“The first time the Red Cross club was suggested, it was by A. George and Jack Chang who wanted to put it together,” Kear said. “They came to me, it was already in the middle of the school year, and I had never been a club sponsor on this campus before so I didn’t have any idea of what I was in for.”

The administrators told Kear that while he could be the sponsor of the club, it was the students’ so they must organize and run it. Although George and other officers formed the club and had meetings for a year and a half, they never filled out registration through the school to make it official or communicated with the parent organization.

“I don’t know if it was my fault because I did not follow up completely enough,” Kear said. “I also don’t know if the people that I talked to were under the impression that the students already knew about these requirements.”

When Kear was a club sponsor at previous schools, he said the procedures were different and he had not familiarized himself enough with the ones here.

“So as it turns out, on this campus, in order to claim to be a representative of the school, we could always use the name of the Red Cross as long as the officers say it’s okay, but the school has to grant approval as well,” Kear said. “Otherwise, we are misrepresenting ourselves. We fumbled at the creation of the club so much so that we were never able to get it going at the time that it needed to be.”

Kear said that the club did not communicate efficiently with the parent Red Cross to know what the requirements were and that he would take most of the blame in the organization of the club as the sponsor.

“I kept saying to the students involved, that they needed to communicate with the parent group and find out what was going on,” Kear said.”Because the clubs are supposed to be run by the students for the students, that was on them and for whatever reason, they were never able to come back and accurately say what the Red Cross’s requirements were.”

The parent organization requires campus Red Cross clubs to have at least 25 members and an operating budget where all members pay a fee. From there, fundraisers and other activities can be created.

“For next year, my understanding is that a constitution has been written, a communication with the parent organization exists, and the requirements are understood,” Kear said. “During the 2018-2019 school year, the club should be able to start off right at the beginning of the year.”