Universities generally require student groups seeking formal recognition (in order to use the school name, receive funding, etc.) to submit a club constitution. This is meant to give long-term structure to the group by formally specifying its purpose, leadership, scope, and decision-making process. However, it can be difficult to write a formal constitution if you’re just getting started because you don’t really know how your group will function yet — and you probably want to give yourself room to grow & adapt. You don’t need to worry too much about writing a constitution that’s perfect — you can just submit something that fits the school’s requirements. It’s perfectly valid to come back and change it later (and you might want to)!
Most schools publish their own list of requirements for club constitutions. You can find this on the website of the Student Union, or whatever part of the university administers clubs. (The fastest way to find them is generally to Google “[university name] student group constitution”).
We’ve written a template constitution below. This will probably not fulfill all of your institution’s requirements, but it’s a good place to start. (Also, this is just an example — feel free to write your own, if you’d like.)