A University of Rhode Island club with the goal of circulating campus confidence took hiatus in the spring, and new club leadership plans to bring it back by spring 2025.
The confidence club still has their student senate organization mailbox, which contains mail yet to be picked up, according to Amy White, administrative assistant of the URI student senate.
The URInvolved website still has the confidence club listed as a URI organization, listing scheduled club meetings every Thursday at 7:30 p.m. in the Memorial Union.
Information service technician Claudette Downey found no record of the club hosting meetings in the Memorial Union.
“They might be having their meetings somewhere else, ” Downey said.
The confidence club’s most recent post dates back to April 24, 35 days after they were officially recognized by the student senate.
When contacted for updates on their current activity, the club’s Instagram gave no reply.
Fourth-year Waseem Bahra is the founder and former president of the confidence club.
“I was surrounded by many people who themselves were lacking confidence and I saw myself as a solution for those people,” Bahra said. “I decided to create an organization to get us out there more.”
Bahra said he stepped down from his role due to a busy work schedule and passed the role of president to former Vice President Zalmay Ahmad.
Regarding the club’s activity in spring 2024, Bahra said the club held 10 to 18 meetings. However, second-year Ahmad said they only met five times.
During these meetings, club members practiced “social drill” exercises to help students put themselves out there, according to Bahra.
Ahmad set the record straight that the club had not died, but had gone through a tough transition process at the end of the spring semester.
“Half our executive board was gone in a month because they all graduated at the same time,” Ahmad said. “So all the people that were kinda running the show… were gone.”
By the end of last semester, the club lost its president, secretary and treasury. Ahmad said that the club did not plan any events over the summer, which resulted in their hiatus.
The remaining board members – club President Ahmad, social media manager David Dulaimy and new secretary Cameron Petrangelo – had to rebuild the club on their own.
“Once we were back [on campus for the fall semester] it was like, ‘okay, let’s get the ball rolling,’ but then you realize [that] half our people are gone, including our [former] president,” Ahmad said. “So it was pretty chaotic.”
The fall semester has been a process of rebuilding the confidence club, according to Ahmad.
“New leadership is always going to be difficult, but if we were able to do pretty great things the first time around,” Ahmad said. “Then that just means taking what we already have and making it better.”
Ahmad hopes to launch an event this semester, but the goal is for the club to be up and officially running again by spring 2025.
The confidence club aims to be a tool to fuel more on-campus connections between students, according to Ahmad. This involves helping students, mainly first time college students, make friends and ultimately become more confident in themselves.
“It’s about time to get that ball rolling again,” Ahmad said. “We are definitely still alive, if anything the best is yet to come.”
For updates, visit the confidence club Instagram page @confidenceuri when it reactivates for the upcoming spring semester.