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I just watched Hamilton in theatres. It was playing at Cineplex for its 10-year anniversary (it is a shame I had not watched it before), and how coincidental that, like Alexander Hamilton, I had a constitution to write…but not for the United States, just a university club on the south shores of Detroit. It got me thinking, 10 years ago, I was ten years old, and while still passionate about writing and reading, I had no idea that when I got into post-secondary that I would be leading a club fostering that very thing. Hell, even in my first year, I was just very excited to be on the social media team, and never planned to be a group leader. However, as I observed how other programs, most notably STEM, had many opportunities and bonding nights, I knew that there needed to be a space for English majors, or simply put, creatives. There was so much artistic talent to go around.
I often find myself thinking about the importance of community. Bound by culture, religion, special interests, or the need to have a found family and by my third year in university, I knew this was very important to me. It’s something my dear friend, “Ribbon Girl,” and I discovered together as we worked through our English and Creative Writing degrees. When given managerial editing jobs for our class chapbook, we held meetings with our friends outside of class and ended up finding a thousand things we had in common, having a genuinely giggly time.
In fact, it is why we approached the EUSA president of that year after a very successful Valentine’s Day bake sale to ask if the position for the following year was vacant. She said it was, and “Ribbon Girl” and I were excited to build our own community from scratch.We later found out that the position needed a vote. Since co-presidents could not run, because that is unconstitutional, I had to advocate for both “Ribbon Girl” and myself—backed by a Chappell Roan Canva Campaign and a dream.
I discovered I won the election while hosting the EUSA booth with “Ribbon Girl” at the Spring 2025 open house, manifesting our win by meeting the very students who would soon be part of our community.
In a lot of ways, there were tiny invisible strings that led up to leading this club…I recall being in my Writing about Literature classroom, and “Ribbon Girl” and I’s professor told us about the English lounge for undergraduate students, and how our university was planning on removing it if more students did not use it. Now, it will be the EUSA’s common room, and a place for meetings, which is something I am grateful for having a hand in.
What is the EUSA?
The English Undergraduate Student Association (EUSA) is a campus community for lovers of literature and creatives on campus alike… as “Red Wine Super Poet” says, it’s comfort in a place of function. Our executive office is in the English lounge—where I dream of making a literary home for my family, coffee bar and all.
Opening this club to the student body outside of English is intentional. Most of the poets I’ve studied in class, notably from the early periods, are always many things at once; Charlotte Brontë worked as a governess, Kurt Vonnegut was a car salesman, and Arthur Conan Doyle… a surgeon by day. However, with the sheer amount of division in academia today, that notion does not and would not thrive. My executive team and I, “Ribbon Girl,” “Red Wine Super Poet,” and “Substack Celebrity,” stood at the involvement fair as engineers fresh out of Frosh week activities wearing Minecraft hats, psychology majors who never knew there was a club like this, and a biology major who struggled between her two passions and wanted to keep herself more involved in that realm beyond taking an English minor stood engaged in our spiel. Just listen to my professor in our first lecture of the year, who exclaimed that if you do not live your contradictions, no one will do it for you.
Generation Zine
Each year, the EUSA publishes a zine. Our Generation Zine has been around for, well, generations. In fact, it is one of Canada’s oldest student-led publications, with the first zine dating back to the 1960s. In the COVID-19 era, the EUSA, and in turn, Generation, halted to a stop; it was not until 2023 that two ambitious fourth years decided to start it up again, ensuring a richer experience for English majors and literary lovers on campus in the coming years, with the zine theme being “reborn.”
In our annual zine, we accept poetry, prose, art, and photography, tied together by a themed thread. Our editing team works to polish the pieces submitted, and our social media/marketing team ensures that the news is spread. At the end of the winter semester, we have a zine produced, a piece of physical media entirely made by the student body on campus, including students from uOttawa and UofT, since it’s an intervarsity publication.
In these times of constant content being fed to us through generated AI machines and algorithms, it is so important to nurture a group that tangibly creates art. We are currently living at a point where media and content are being thrown at us from all directions; we are stuck in a constant cycle of consumption rather than creation. Humans are meant to create, and this force-feeding of creation that isn’t our own is overwhelming and paralyzing. The only solution is creation. Being creative and making art, bad or good, is extremely important for mental health and intellectual stimulation. Art is so innately human; it brings vibrance and beauty to the world, and anyone is capable of it. Through the Generation zine, my executive team and I want to encourage the artistry of all different mediums.
Meet the EUSA’s Mascots
These two jelly cats were purchased on a day in July after a stroll around Biblioasis in Walkerville. EUSA’s colours were already established (by me), and “Ribbon Girl” and I decided we’d dress them in bows in the colour of the other’s fur and name them after a poem we studied in Later British Literature. It was not until Easter of the following year that we realized Lizzie and Laura were destined for bigger things than sitting on our respective beds.
A little bit about “Goblin Market,” the poem that inspires our mascot names: written by Christina Rossetti, a Pre-Raphaelite poet, the narrative is full of delicious, rich, suggestive, lush imagery, combining lovely alliteration and rhyme to create both a visual and sonically immersive world. The poem follows Laura and Lizzie, who live together in their cozy, countryside cottage, as they are tempted by goblin merchants forcibly trying to sell alluring and seductive fruits to them. Laura and Lizzie must protect and prioritize each other from outside forces to preserve the cottage-core life they have built together… and they must have gotten through it—how else would they have made it to UWindsor?
Keep an eye open for these two around campus, they’ll be planning events and tying ribbons on their bookmarks… or around their bunny ears.
If you have read this long, I sure hope I’ve captured your attention. Go to@eusa.uwin on Instagram. Applications are still live, join my found family!