On paper, the SASPD’s Book Club no longer exists, but a few of its members continue to organizing meetings – and they are trying to reach out to new members.

The Book Club’s last year of official recognition was the 2018-19 school year. Supervised by then-Middle School Librarian Mrs. Boyer, the club’s meetings consisted of discussions on books the members are assigned each other to read, with a particular focus on the relation between fictional works and the real world. At the time, its membership, numbering 14 people in total, consisted almost solely of seniors and freshmen. Come the end of the year, with the seniors graduating and Mrs. Boyer moving to Saudi Arabia, only the four youngest members remained to oversee the club’s transition into the next school year.

Victoria Zhuang ’22 joined the club in 2018 after visiting its booth at the club fair, having heard about it in Middle School. In 2019, she found herself among the four freshmen that remained. “We never really thought about applying,” she said regarding the clubs’ loss of status. She noted that both the small number of remaining members and irregular meeting times factored into their decision. As a result, they have continued to eschew the club rotation schedule. Despite this flexibility, it became increasingly hard for the group to manage their other commitments, leading to more infrequent meetings. Both this and the vastly diminished membership have meant that the club has effectively faded from public view.

Nonetheless, they continue to meet, even as one of their members Elizabeth Bois ’22 has left the school at the end of the last semester, further reducing their membership to a mere three people. They’ve attempt to maintain the club’s traditional meeting format to the best of their ability, but their unique circumstances have led to some changes. For example, with only three steady members left, there is no need (or capacity) for formal leadership; the club is instead organized in a manner akin to a co-operative: “we all work together and try to help each other”, Zhuang said.

One of the club’s goals this year is to prevent a repeat of the 2019 by attracting new membership, particularly underclassmen like themselves. Their strategy has been to focus their recruiting efforts on library regulars. So far, their attempts have not yielded success. Zhuang said that “[she is] kind of worried about not being able to find underclassmen who would be willing to join”. Nonetheless, the she and her fellow club members still remains hopeful that their club will soon be welcoming new members.