The identity of a land grant university is shaped by its academic and research missions, and, perhaps more significantly, its extracurricular offerings. Institutions like Michigan State University flex their competitive athletics programs, lively nightlife and vast array of student organizations — which number over 1,000 at MSU.
While the rare, motivated student might create a club or two during their time on campus, one recent graduate boasts a stacked entrepreneurial resume.
Margaux Smith, who graduated last year from the College of Arts and Letters, has seen wild successes and crushing unpopularity from the clubs she created as a student. She's behind MSU's celebrated Squirrel Spotting Club, its unpopular rival Anti Squirrel Feeding Club, the Watch Grass Grow Club, the short-lived Humanities Social Network and the MSU Ballet Club.
Smith says the reasons for her rampant club-making are two-fold: A joke between friends that was kept alive for her four years on campus, and the fact that creating a student organization at MSU is so easy.
"You just need four people and a constitution and you're done," Smith said.
The most popular of her creations, the Squirrel Spotting Club, got its start after Smith heard rumors about the existence of such a club (the Eastern Grey and Fox Squirrels that populate MSU's campus have acquired a cult-like following amongst students, who occasionally feed them). Those rumors were buoyed by additional talk of club meant to spot members of the Squirrel Spotting Club.
Neither club actually existed, so Smith took it upon herself to start the Squirrel Spotting Club in the spring of 2023. She and Kinsey Skjold, Smith’s roommate at the time who graduated last year with a bachelor’s degree in biomedical laboratory science, began to feed squirrels by Beaumont Tower.
The club started as a joke, but gained momentum at that next fall’s Sparticipation, where many students showed interest in becoming members.
One such student is the current president of the Squirrel Spotting Club, Margaret Babiarz.
Though it was her first week on campus, Babiarz quickly became involved in the growing group.
