Furry club finds footing at CPP
By Kiara Craig, March 24, 2026
Two club leaders, one in black cat ears and another with a blue wolf head, dove into a presentation in front of a couple dozen students packed into a classroom in Building 24D at Cal Poly Pomona during U-hour about a topic that connects them all: furries.
According to PAW Vice President Tyler Burke, being a furry is defined by an interest in anthropomorphic animals. Though many people enjoy the fandom as a hobby, some artists view it as a livelihood. The Pomona Anthropomorphic Wing club established itself in fall 2025 to be a safe space for furries to express unique interests and creativity.
Though PAW is a recent addition to CPP’s long list of clubs on campus, the furry community has been active on campus since 2018, according to Thomas Luu, physics student and PAW president.
“We have these traditions with the old groups,” Luu said. “Our history spans a little longer than other Cal States. Our Discord has been around since 2018. That’s actually the original one they used to communicate with one another. It’s nice to be able to evolve it into an official university recognized community for furries.”
Prior to PAW, the CPP furry community was active and operated as an unofficial club. The community held gatherings but with less structure. Members of this group booked study rooms to work on fursuits or spend time together chatting about common interests.
“Some people would talk about cars, some people would talk about video games,” said CPP alumnus Ulises Chavez-Luna. “It was very loosely related to things about furries specifically. It was more like, ‘Hey, we all like this thing. Let’s get to know each other.’ It was a big friend group at that point.”
Though some alumni could not experience the community as an official club during their time on campus, some remain active on the club’s Discord server, which has garnered more than 200 members. In the server, channels are available for students to connect with each other, share artwork, create unofficial club events and receive notifications on what’s to come during weekly meetings.
Weekly club meetings are centered around informational presentations on key aspects of the furry community, including what it means to be a furry.
According to a published furry based research group, Furscience, while half of surveyed participants showed interest in owning a fursuit, only 10%-15% of respondents owned one. Though participation in creative work is not a requirement to be a part of the community, these creative avenues are pillars of the fandom.
“The furry community sprouted out not as a fanbase of corporate properties like anime or superhero communities,” Luu said. “The furry community distinguishes itself in that people’s characters are their own, and it revolves around that grassroots nature of it.”
Large furry conventions often feature artist allies or dealer’s dens, which are large artist floors that allow vendors to set up booths and sell artwork, accessories and in this case, fursuits.
Many furries develop an original character, or fursona, which they commission as small artists or businesses for art, fursuits and merchandise.
Fursuits, though an iconic aspect of the fandom, are labor intensive to create. Some can take months to make dependent on the fursuit maker. Popular fursuit makers or furry artists may have higher-end prices as they gain popularity.
Commission can range based on how much of the suit is requested, but a full suit can cost thousands of dollars. Furries often opt for “partials,” or partial suits, that consist of the head, tail, paws and sometimes feet of the suit to commission at a lower price.
There are several different styles of fursuits. From the more recognizable toon look to the increasingly popular Japanese anime-like kemono style, many makers can find a niche to settle into.
Commissions require a reference sheet, which are drawings without shading to display the features and true colors of a character for a maker to reference. While there are many templates available online, some people will opt to commission from a furry artist.
As furry fandom has grown, large companies have created mass manufactured options for fursuits. Stores like Hot Topic sell furry paws, and Spirit Halloween sold fursuit heads, paws and tails in October 2025 at a much lower price point than what is often available for commission.
“To me and a lot of other people in the fandom, it’s kind of soulless,” Burke said. “It’s a corporate capitalist’s need to find a way to make money off of that. It’s an unfortunate side effect of the fandom becoming more normalized.”
Some members of the community, like Burke, find mass produced furry products distasteful, not because of potentially lower quality, but rather the intentions of those who make them. In a culture built around self-expression, the concept of people buying the exact same look in the same style can feel out of place.
However, some furries have found ways to make these cheaper options unique.
“Some people shave down the fur, colored and changed out the eyes, and I’ve seen a few at some furry conventions that I couldn’t tell were from Spirit Halloween because of how much work they put into it,” Chavez-Luna said.
PAW will continue hosting events and presentations on furry related topics, according to Luu. Some future events will include movie nights and unofficial meetups planned in the discord, with hopes to build up to a furry convention meetup later down the line. PAW is open for students to join during its Thursday u-hour meetings and the club discord.
