Del Valle, Rosa 1

Monica Del Valle, Marina Rosa

Megan Keaton
ENC 2135
28 July 2015
At Florida State University there are hundreds of student organizations and clubs that
give students the opportunity to get involved on campus. Each organization has its own unique
members, goals, and terminology that separate their community from the others. One
organization in particular, C.H.I.C.S, utilizes many different forms of communication, or genres,
to interact with its members. This paper analyzes the effect these genres have on the C.H.I.C.S
community and how it functions.
WHAT IS C.H.I.C.S?
Caring and Helping in Community Service, or C.H.I.C.S, is a student-run, non-profit
organization at Florida State University (FSU). Membership is open to all students of FSU,
including graduates that are no longer in attendance. There are different forms of membership,
which are dependent on the level of participation in the clubs activities and if a member has
applied for an officer position on the Executive Board, or Eboard. Eboard positions include the
President, Vice President, Treasurer, Secretary, etc. These officer positions are renewed each year
by election, which gives the members the opportunity to increase their responsibilities and
contribution the C.H.I.C.S community. In order to be eligible for an Eboard position, the
members must be actively completing the required 15 hours of community service and attending
the weekly meetings. At these meetings which are held every Wednesday at 7 p.m., the members
that wish to be considered active members and have the eligibility to participate in the clubs
projects must pay dues.

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The purpose of the organization is to serve the community of Tallahassee by partaking in
community service projects. Not only does the club help organizations outside of FSU, but they
also participate in on-campus activities. According to the Vice President of C.H.I.C.S Deaven
Palm, [members] volunteer at community cleanups, fundraisers, the Big Event, Relay for Life,
and many, many different kinds of events. The events that C.H.I.C.S chooses to participate in
require members to perform numerous tasks that range from animal care to fundraising.
Members have the freedom to choose which events they would like to attend in order to suit their
personal preferences. Although community service is the primary purpose of the club, there are
other purposes that are beneficial to the students that are members of C.H.I.C.S. One of the
additional purposes is to unite the students of FSU by encouraging social interaction. The club
holds meeting every Wednesday, which gives the members the opportunity to meet face-to-face
on a weekly basis and discuss the clubs future projects and service opportunities. The frequent
interaction among the members enables friendships to be formed with other students that share
the common interest of helping the community.
There are many reasons why a student would join a club like C.H.I.C.S that focuses on
community service. In an interview with the C.H.I.C.S organization advisor Katie Grissom, she
expressed why she felt students should consider joining C.H.I.C.S by stating that the club, helps
students find their passion and path in life. Claims made by Susan R. Jones and Kathleen E. Hill
in a journal article support Grissoms statement because they found evidence that college
students who participated in community service were provided a unique opportunity to reflect
on [their] identity and what is important in [their] life(Hill and Jones 532). Grissom was an
active member of C.H.I.C.S before she became the advisor and felt that the club had something
for everyone and that the camaraderie made the transition to college life easier for the students.

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Grissom further explained that students may be drawn to community service and C.H.I.C.S
because giving back just feels good.
Key Terms: community service, volunteering, members, students, Eboard, Servscript.
GENRES
The CHICS community is made up of about five hundred members, including active,
alumni, and inactive members. With such a large number of members, C.H.I.C.S utilizes many
different genres to ensure that the community is successfully communicating its events and
goals.
CONSTITUTION
In an organization that requires the collaboration of many individuals, it is important to
have a comprehensive list of rules or procedures available to all of the organizations members.
C.H.I.C.S organizes its procedures in the form of a constitution. According to Karolina Milewicz,
constitutions refer to the bulk of basic legal norms organizing and institutionalizing a
[community], and therefore concern the regulation of the basic institutionsthat occupy the
center of the communitys life (Milewicz 418). By Milewiczs definition, a constitution is the
basic framework of how a community operates and is the foundation a community needs to
function on a daily basis.
Constitutions have the ability to create a formal structure within a community that is
made public with the intention of its members abiding by and understanding the constitution
thoroughly. Milewicz explains that, formal elements of a constitution imply that constitutions
have to fulfill related procedural function (Milewicz 418). The formal elements, or conventions,
of a constitution are its articles, sections, amendments, and formal language. The articles of a
constitution act as a written separation between the different ideas the community wants to

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incorporate in their body of regulations. For example, in the official C.H.I.C.S constitution, there
are twelve articles, each of which deals with a different aspect of the organizations policies.
These articles are then further divided into multiple subdivisions, or sections. For instance,
article three of the C.H.I.C.S constitution is titled Article III: Membership. This article is
separated into nine sections that outline and define what membership is to the organization,
including the definitions of active membership, inactive membership, alumni membership, and
advisory membership. The sections are extremely detailed in order to ensure that there is no
confusion or disagreement among the communitys members and leaders.
Another important element of a constitution is that it is written (Milewicz 417).
Physically writing down a constitution establishes it as a formal and rigid document that can be
seen and read by many people anytime and anywhere. The absence of a written constitution can
lead to misinterpretation or a general sense of misinformation due to the fact that the members of
that particular community have no physical copy of the regulations and procedures to refer to.
Writing down the constitution also enables the communitys leadersin C.H.I.C.S case its
executive board membersto edit the document as they see the need for a change, which gives
the constitution flexibility (Milewicz 418). The amendment is another convention of a
constitution that allows the members to add to or revise the documents present state. The
flexibility that these amendments grant is hindered by the fact that there are usually specific
approval requirements. In the C.H.I.C.S constitution, Article XII: Amendments states that an
amendments can only be made with the approval of two-thirds of the executive board and threefourths of active members. The benefit of this approval system is that it requires the involvement
of the community as a whole rather than just the leaders who write the constitution. This gives
the active members a chance to voice opinions and suggestions that the president of C.H.I.C.S

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can translate into the formal language that is required when writing a constitution. The use of
formal language gives the document a professional tone and upholds its credibility.
There are many reasons that using a constitution is the most effective way to
communicate the communitys procedural functions. The format of the constitution keeps
C.H.I.C.S organized and ensures that the structure of the club is not compromised. The fact that
the constitution is written with Microsoft Word, allows it to be easily revised and saved. Having
a digital constitution uploaded onto the organizations Nole Central website increases the
members accessibility because it can viewed from anywhere that has Internet access. The
increased accessibility benefits the organization because potential, future C.H.I.C.S members can
easily become aware of the communitys policies and use the document to make their decision
on whether to join the community or not. The C.H.I.C.S constitution helps the community
maintain the identity it has developed over the course of its existence. The constitution changes
and grows as the C.H.I.C.S community expands and improves as a community.
FACEBOOK:
Ever since its creation, the Internet and social media has become a major influence in the
life of many people, including workers and students.One of the most popular social media outlets
today is Facebook. Facebook has been the way people have communicated on a daily basis for
years. According to the study by Edison Research in 2010, Approximately 41% of the U.S
population has a personal Facebook page (qtd. King, David, and Eric Poulin 43). One of the
most frequently used unofficial genres within the community of Caring and Helping in
Community Service (C.H.I.C.S) is Facebook.
The way Facebook is used in student organizations seems to vary depending on how the
organization functions and the activities they take part in, however, the conventions and

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mediums of Facebook remain the same. An important and recognizable Facebook convention is
the like button, this button is used to like or favorite pictures, status updates, videos, and
organization pages. It is important to note that to liking a persons picture is different from liking
an organizational page, for one to be able to like the picture of a person they must be friends
with that person, while to like a organizational page on Facebook one does not need to follow
or be friends with that person. The convention includes the like button but what makes it
different from other websites is that Facebook does not include a dislike button.
One of the most frequently used mediums in Facebook is the status update box; as David
King argues, The status update box is your main point of connection to your local Facebook
crowd (King, David, and Eric Poulin 45) which can be understood why it is so commonly used
by many. It is also important to note that with the many types of social media that currently exist,
Facebook seems to be the one that is mostly used when it comes to businesses purposes as it is
not as informal as Twitter or Instagram. The conventions of Facebook also make it more formal
and a superior form of communication where as Twitter, for example, has a character limit per
post and Instagram is mostly used to post pictures. While Facebook does not have a 140character limit to posts and users are allowed to post pictures, therefore, making Facebook one of
the best resources to use. One of the mediums of Facebook that is used constantly and updated
everyday by users are pictures. Due to the amount of people that have Facebook and log in to
their account everyday pictures go viral in a matter of hours, making them a very popular
medium of Facebook. With this in mind, most student organizations use Facebook not only as a
source of communication but to complete many other tasks.
In C.H.I.C.S Facebook is used for a variety of tasks and different members of the
Executive Board have different responsibilities when it comes to updating the Facebook group

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page. The main people who update the group page tend to be the President, being the most
responsible for keeping the organizations records, and the Secretary (Prom, Christopher, and
Ellen Swain 350). However, they are not the only ones who can post updates on the group page.
Members of the community of Tallahassee and outside organizations who have been accepted to
join the group can post updates if they need volunteers for events that C.H.I.C.S was not
previously aware of. Members of the organization who are not on the Executive Board are also
allowed to voice their opinion through the Facebook group, seeing as they are allowed to
comment on posts, post pictures of events, and sign up for upcoming events. The Facebook
group benefits the organizations in many different ways, one way is that this Facebook group
serves as a very important communication instrument. It is through Facebook that members who
missed meetings, for example, can become aware of the weekly events and how to get involved.
It is a quicker way of members to get answer to questions when needed since most people have
Facebook on their phones and log into their accounts at least once a day. The Facebook group
also promotes events, since nowadays social media is the best way to get peoples attention on
certain matters. The Facebook page also allows former members to still follow and get updates
on how the organization is doing as the current president of C.H.I.C.S stated, Alumni members
really like seeing that the club is doing well and sometimes they even reach out to us about
certain events they would like for us to help them out with (Andrade, Liliana). The Facebook
genre brings many benefits to this community as previously mentioned but it also has some
constraints to it. Being an unofficial genre, means this Facebook is not required to be used within
the community even though most members choose to, this can be a problem to members that
choose not to have a Facebook personal account as they are not allowed to see the posts on the
Facebook group page of C.H.I.C.S.

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As previously mentioned the people who write the posts on the Facebook group page
tend to be mostly the executive board members and their intended audience is not only the
members of the organization, but also the members of the Leon County community and FSU
community who need volunteers from C.H.I.C.S. This genre serves a very important purpose of
communication through the organization, allowing members to be aware of any sudden changes
in times or dates for volunteering events or new sign-up sheets for upcoming events. The
Facebook genre is a modern way of communication that facilitates the job of the executive board
members as well as the members of the organization (Prom, Christopher, and Ellen Swain 352).
And due to Facebook being such an important part in the lives of many people nowadays, it is
understandable why student organizations such as C.H.I.C.S would choose to use Facebook over
another genre to communicate. The genre of Facebook has become widely used within student
organizations and businesses as it is a popular resource since so many people have an account
and log in their accounts daily and because it is one of the best and quickest way to communicate
to other members of a community.
SERVSCRIPT:
C.H.I.C.S is a community service organization, so it is necessary to have a place where
the members can keep track of their contribution to the community. The program the club uses is
called Servscript. Servscript is a form provided by the Center for Leadership and Social Change
that can be filled out online or on a printed document. The form is made up of tables that are
labeled with the information that should be written in each box. Since the purpose of the form is
to track a students community service hours, the students are required to fill in information
regarding the date and time of the service, what agency they worked with, and the contact
information of the agency in order to verify that the service was completed.

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One advantage of using this program over others is that Servscript is both online and a
printout. The members of C.H.I.C.S can easily transfer their community service hours from the
printed form to the online form, which automatically gets submitted into the Servscript system
for review. Once the information on the form has been verified, the students community service
hours are then transferred to their official transcript. This can only be accomplished if the
students meet the deadlines that the Servscript program has listed on the document. Another
advantage of using Servscript is that because it is a downloadable document, the members can be
easily share their Servscript form with the executive board members that oversee the active
members community service records. The reason Servscript is an important genre to the
community is because, according to the C.H.I.C.S constitution, the active members are required
to complete fifteen hours of community service in order to take part in the C.H.I.C.S social
events.
C.H.I.C.S has the Servscript document posted on the Nole Central website and their
Facebook page. By doing so, the club is utilizing their most important communicative genres to
ensure that their community members can easily access the document. Also, by encouraging the
clubs members to use the same program enhances the organizations uniformity and structure.
CALENDAR:
An official genre used commonly within the community of Caring and Helping in
Community Service is the calendar. This genre is used on the daily bases and it is essential to the
organization as it is the method to plan everything the community does throughout the different
semesters. The calendar is how the student organization can plan accordingly for different
events, and it is a way to keep track and record of how many events they also host and help with
during the semester. The type of calendar C.H.I.C.S uses is a digital calendar, meaning it is

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through both the Nole Central website page and through C.H.I.C.S Facebook group page. The
convention of this genre is that it has a certain amount of characters and when scheduling an
event in the calendar, the date, hour, and a short description of the event appears. Since this is a
digital calendar the mediums of this genre are a bit different it is both visual and linguistic as
people can see the events on the calendar and also read the events. And due to the digital
calendar being in both the Nole Central and the Facebook group page it shows that the intended
audience is not restricted to only members of the organization but since it is in the Nole Central
any person FSU student who logs in and searches Caring and Helping in Community Service
can get access to their calendar.
According to the C.H.I.C.S Constitution that is updated every semester the person who is
always in charge of writing in the calendar and making sure that it is always up to date is the
secretary. The purpose of this genre is to organize all the events and important dates for the
semester all in one place. It is also important to the members as it makes them aware and can
remind them of past or upcoming events. With the calendar also being on the public Nole Central
page, other FSU students who may not be members but are considering joining an organization
can have an explicit look at what events the organization takes part in during the semesters. The
community chooses the digital calendar as a genre rather than just a written calendar in order to
simplify and facilitate the planning and organizing of events for the members. The fact that the
calendar is digital allows members that could not make it to meetings also be informed of when
events are taking place and when the deadline to sign up to be volunteers is.
FLYERS:
Another very common unofficial genre used within many student organizations is the
genre of flyers. Flyers are used with the purpose to promote events, meetings, or anything else

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that the organization is taking part in. For the most part flyers are used for this same purpose but
to reach slight different goals depending on the organization. The conventions of a flyer are that
they must call attention in order to serve their purpose to inform, persuade, and aware people of
the information they contain. Flyers likewise contains a title or heading that states the name of
the event and usually includes a summary of what the event is going to be about. Important
conventions of flyers also are pictures; pictures emphasize and highlight the information in the
flyers. The use of rhetoric devices such as pathos, when creating a flyer is also very important
and helpful when choosing the pictures. As for example when trying to gather volunteers to help
at a dog shelter, a picture of a dog alone in a shelter will generate emotional responses from their
audience in the flyer therefore having a greater impact on the decision that the person makes to
either volunteer or not. And lastly the flyer will contain important information regarding the
event such as the date, address, and if needed the recommended attire and/or material. The
medium of flyers are very basic as they are just sheets of paper, making flyers a very inexpensive
and popular way to promote an event.
Flyers within the community of C.H.I.C.S serve the purpose of promoting events and
recruiting volunteers. Flyers are very commonly used amongst this community as it is an
inexpensive and great way to promote an event or get the help needed for an event. The
limitations to it are that sometimes flyers end up being too brief and not giving enough
information to convince a person to volunteer in a project. The people in charge of writing and
creating these flyers are the members of the organization with the help of the Secretary. And the
intended audience ranges from members that are a part of C.H.I.C.S to citizens of Tallahassee
depending on the project. C.H.I.C.S uses this genre over other means of promoting due to the
amount of benefits that flyers entail.

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CHALKING:
Since C.H.I.C.S is a community service organization that hosts and takes part in many
events it is necessary to promote these events, besides flyers another way of promotion is
through what the community refers to as chalking. The current Vice President of the
organization, Deaven Palm, said the following during an interview We [members] create
chalking every week to reach out to non-members. This genre, or chalking as the community
refers to, is done by writing with chalk amongst sidewalks in order to not only reach out to nonmembers as the Deaven Palm stated but also to inform the FSU community of events and
community service opportunities. The conventions of chalking are that the message in the
chalking is very brief, maybe only stating the name of the event or what the event is along with
the time, date, and location. The chalking also tends to be colorful in order to get the audiences
attention and the place where it is created is done with the purpose for the intended audience.
The medium used for chalking is very simple as it is usually on a sidewalk, normally within
Florida State University.
The community of C.H.I.C.S is a very friendly and engaged organization that is focused
on helping the community of FSU and Tallahassee. The genre of chalking represents a part of
who C.H.I.C.S is, because while other communities have much more expensive ways to promote
events, this organization chooses to find an inexpensive, easy, yet creative method of promoting
or adhering volunteers to events as it does not require much. The constraints to it are that it is
something that can get washed out with bad weather, not durable, and like flyers may not give
enough information to convince the audience to participate in the event. However, it is still a
method that is used a lot since it calls the attention of many in the student body of FSU. The
people in charge of making these are the members with the supervision of the Public Relations

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executive, as he or she is the one who chooses how the publicizing of an event will go about.
Therefore this genre helps the community meet its goals of promoting events and community
service opportunities to the intended audience in a different and interesting manner, which is
another reason why the community of C.H.I.C.S would pick this genre over different ones.
C.H.I.C.S & GENRES
Every student organization uses multiple genres in order to function. In C.H.I.C.S many
of the genres are used as a mean of communication with members and non-members. But the
communication genres aren't strictly used to communicate but also to promote events, remind
members of events, and allow non-members or past members to be aware of what the
organization is involved in. The genre of Facebook serves the purpose of allowing members to
communicate with each other, sign up for events if they had missed a meeting, look at event
pictures, and it also remind members of events and meetings. Facebook itself contains the genre
of the digital calendar, which serves the purpose of organizing dates for events and reminding
members of these events, therefore the genre of facebook is connected to the genre of the
calendar.
The flyer and chalking genres are also connected in the way that they serve the same
purpose, to remind, promote, and adhere volunteers to events. While different due to their
conventions and mediums the flyer, which contains a short summary of what the event entails is
usually made before the chalking, which contains a brief information regarding the event.
Therefore chalkings are made based on a summarized information of flyers. These two genres of
promotion are also connected to the calendar as the event information is first processed and input
in the calendar in order for the flyers and the chalkings to be made. The Facebook genre also
seems to be connected with almost all the other genres since it is where members post many

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documents such as sign up sheets, pictures, events information. The Facebook is where all the
genres are able to connect as a whole. For example, the meeting date and time is posted on the
Facebook Page then after the meeting the weekly and monthly events are posted on Facebook
and in the digital calendar. These events and dates information are then summarized and put into
flyers, which are then put into an even more brief description for the chalking. These genres and
their conventions exhibit what this community is really focused on. Being a community service
community C.H.I.C.S is willing to put all its time and money into events and aspects that will
benefit their community rather than spending time and money on aspects of promoting events
only to make the organization better rather than the community.

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Works Cited
Grissom, Katie. Personal interview. 23 jul. 2015.
Jones, Susan R., and Kathleen E. Hill. "Understanding Patterns of Commitment: Student
Motivation for Community Service Involvement." The Journal of Higher Education 74.5
(2003): 516-39. Print.
King, David Lee. "Facebook for Libraries: It's Easy to Use Social Media's Most Popular Tool to
Connect with Your Community." American Libraries 42.5/6 (2011): 42-45. JSTOR. Web.
27 July 2015.
Milewicz, Karolina. "Emerging Patterns of Global Constitutionalization: Toward a Conceptual
Framework." Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 16.2, Special Issue: Symposium:
Global Constitutionalism - Process and Substance; Kandersteg, Switzerland, January 1720, 2008; Guest Editors: Anne Peters and Klaus Armingeon (2009): 413-36. Print.
Palm, Deaven. Personal Interview. 18 jul. 2015.
Prom, Christopher J. "From the College Democrats to the Falling Illini: Identifying, Appraising,
and Capturing Student Organization Websites." The American Archivist 70.2 (2007): 34463. JSTOR. Web. 27 July 2015.

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Genre Ecology Map

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