The University of Oklahoma has updated its Registered Student Organization policy after hearing complaints of preferential treatment.

The new policy, which classifies every registered student group on campus into various categories and gives various privileges, will replace a roughly 30 year old classification system, said Clark Stroud, OU’s vice president for student affairs and the dean of students.

“This comes from our desire to want to be transparent and to want to be equitable and work with organizations in terms of what privileges they have access to,” Stroud said.

Stroud said there were complaints throughout the years regarding the old policy, which only divided organizations into ‘administrative’ and ‘non-administrative,’ with very few distinguishers between the two. This caused student organizations to feel like they could be discriminated against or given less opportunities, Stroud said.

Ryan Echols, a drama and economics senior and the Student Government Association budgetary committee chair, said students had also complained about varying funding opportunities with the old system.

“Just because an organization was an ‘admin,’ it didn’t entitle them to more funding,” Echols said. “There has been controversy over that though, even though we base funding on various, concrete factors, like a groups fiscal history.”

The updated policy divides student organizations into five different categories – presidential, governmental, interest, departmental and sport clubs – and lays out what specific requirements must be met in order to be in each category.

Students who are interested in starting an organization on campus can register on OrgSync.