DeKALB – The NIU Furry Club was approved by the SGA and the club was officially ratified on April 20.
The NIU Furry Club was unofficially started in February of this year through local group chats. After months of searching for an adviser to make the club official, President Gunner Wright, a sophomore design technology major, found Randy Caspersen, an associate professor in the Department of Communication.
“The problem we ran into is that we couldn’t get an adviser,” Wright said.”We started looking in February and we didn’t find Randy (Casperson), our current adviser, until early May when he finally signed on.”
The furry fandom is characterized as a group of people who have an appreciation for anthropomorphic animal characters. Anthropomorphic characters are a combination of animal and human traits. Many in the furry fandom create what they call “fursonas,” their unique anthropomorphic character.
Wright, the co-creator of the NIU Furry Club, believes an organization like the Furry Club is necessary at NIU.
“The furry community is a community that is growing very rapidly, and a lot of colleges in the area also have communities, clubs and student orgs that are related to the furry community in some way,” Wright said. “I wanted to create a free space for people that are in love with the fandom or part of the fandom or interested in it, or, you know, are just looking for a group that they can identify with or have fun with in the sense of finding joy in being around people. And so I decided that NIU doesn’t have one.”
During an academic semester, club meetings are held bi-weekly. The location of the meetings can be found in Huskie Hub once students have registered to attend the meeting. The club is still in its beginning stage, so it has yet to form a structured schedule. At the moment, a usual club meeting can consist of introductions, a specific discussion topic chosen by the club officials and a casual hangout.
“We’ll start off with an introduction, introducing ourselves to everyone just in case they’re new faces. Then we’ll go over a discussion topic, like one of the ones that I did over the last semester was how to make a fursuit,” Wright said. “And then it turns casual for the last half of the meeting. Students can hang out with people with similar ideas, from the same community and hobby, you know, make friends.”
The NIU Furry Club is open to anyone looking for a comfortable space to spend time.
“You don’t even have to be interested in being a furry or even involved with the fandom. If you are just looking into getting into something that’s out of the ordinary, open to everyone, be who you are. We are here to create a safe space for everyone to explore themselves as people, their love for characters, developing personalities that they feel are more attached to,” Wright said.
