Guild. According to the Encarta Dictionary, a guild is a “club, society, or other organization of people with common interests or goals.”

That definition seems to suit the Wordsmiths Guild just fine. As the creative writing department’s student organization, it has acted as both social club and advocacy group, finding new ways for students to hang out and being a voice for their concerns.

The idea for the guild came about from the environment that students witnessed around them. Eireene Nealand, one of the founders of the Wordsmiths Guild, said that the formation of the guild, some three years ago, was due to inadequacies felt by creative writing students.

“I was quite shocked the first day when the head of our department told me that there were sufficient places for me to do my graduate work on the first floor of the library. While I am glad that SF State does have resources like the J.F. True computer lab, it certainly is not a place to accomplish graduate quality work,” she said. “There’s nothing really wrong with the library, it would just be nice to have a work place to call our own.”

Nealand also explained that she felt the students didn’t receive a lot of respect from the staff. One example she cites was when she went in for career counseling. “Janelle Metz, the humanities career counselor, tried to teach me to surf the Internet, when I was supposed to be getting career help. She pretty much wasted my hour.”

The guild has two general goals on its agenda, according to Haleh Hatami, the vice president. “Our first goal is to create a sense of community amongst students in the creative writing department. SF State is a commuter school, so there’s not a real sense that the department is a place where we gather to talk about writing when we’re not in classes.”

The guild has political goals in mind as well. “We are also a conduit for gathering feedback from students, either through the website or through the survey that was conducted last year,” Hatami said. “We listen to what the students like about the curriculum, what they don’t, and general concerns they have about the department.”

So far, the guild has been successful in fostering a sense of community. One of the goals they had was to create a room where creative writing students could hang out and relax in between classes. They got their wish when they convinced the Poetry Center to stay open longer hours, with the help of volunteers. “The Poetry Center was really helpful in our concerns. They are now open until 9 p.m. sometimes, and were great in showing us that we the students were welcomed in there,” Nealand said.

The guild has also been successful in getting students more respect from staff. “The atmosphere has changed. I’ve noticed in our department that the professors have become really supportive and they’ve been talking about ways to open up opportunities for graduates. The faculty has also started to come to a lot of our events. They hadn’t been coming to a lot of them before,” Nealand explained.

The guild also holds parties for students to get to know each other, as well as career events to let students know what kind of jobs they can get after they graduate.

Its political aims, however, have been hit and miss. One of its successes was dealing with the ongoing budget cuts, by spreading the word about over-registration of classes. “One of the things we did in the fall and spring of last year was to post both electronically, and in the hallways announcements to students to not to over-register for classes because it makes it difficult both for students to get into the classes they need and for the professors, who ultimately have to weed people out of their classrooms to fit the maximum capacity they have set,” Hatami explained.

One of their misses, however, comes to access to computers to work on their graduate studies. “We’ve talked to the College of Humanities computer lab about staying open longer, and they did for a while, but they seem to have gone back on that, now closing around 4 p.m. I hope they change that soon, so we can do our work,” Lealand said.

The guild continues to look towards the future, planning and putting on events. On April 21, the guild will host a Career Event, focusing on careers in creative writing. Then, on April 30, the guild will have its Spring Literary Event/Blowout from 5-8 p.m., where Hatami promises to have “student/teacher performances, improv, live music, games, and graduating student readings. I think it’s a nice way of saying goodbye to them.”

Nealand promises fun on her part as well. “I’m working on an intertextual/architectural room, where students can create poems by interacting with the toys I and a friend will be setting up. I hope people come and enjoy it.”

For more information on the guild, check out their website at http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~wsguild/index.html.