Interest groups here at SAS are the passion projects of the students. They are an opportunity for us to show our potential in leadership and contributions to the community. However, when the new club system discriminates against these groups and directly hinders their opportunity to gain members by barring them from the club fair, how can these students accomplish their goals?
The Birth of Interest Groups
Interest groups were introduced to SAS because of an overabundance of clubs. The club fair was getting more and more crowded every year. According to the teachers at the time, they were taking up resources and space without doing anything in return.
Simply put, they lacked accountability and the system did nothing to punish it. With competition for finite resources, the school needed a system to filter out clubs for quality so that the resources were used in the best way possible.
The Problem with SAS Culture
The only problem is: clubs aren’t just convenient application boosters. They are groups of students who get to access school funding and accessibility to the student body in order to do things they are passionate about while contributing to the community.
High school is a unique four-year period of life where students are old enough to have some agency and power in the school to create tangible products. They also happen to be four years where students have no responsibilities outside of being learners and actively engaging in there extracurricular hobbies.
Clubs are cool because they allow for small communities to come together with resources and make something out of it. The Thespians entertain with their theatrics, Tri-M stuns with musical performances, and Jazz Band knows how to excite a crowd.
Interest groups were never meant to be just the throwaway clubs that didn’t make it.
Interest groups were never meant to be just the throwaway clubs that didn’t make it. They were intended to be a unique space that had no time constraints, were completely student-run, and completely focused on whatever they choose to do because they exist outside of club audits and the much stricter requirements of the official clubs in the rotation.
The club rotation was a way to enforce stricter club meetings so that members would actually show up and participate in clubs. It was also a way to make the club environment more realistic and characteristic of college. Having a club system that operates like a typical university one is one way to help prepare the students for the next chapter in their lives. Students were forced to drop clubs and pick and choose where they wanted to stay. When enough students leave one club for another club, it loses the driving force that keeps it alive. This was an intentional part of the system, to enforce quality over quantity.
Sure, a student could be a member of four different clubs with the schedule, but they probably would be doing less for each club than someone who only was in two clubs. Similarly, people who were in five or more clubs were forced to cut down so that they could invest a realistic amount of time into the clubs without spreading themselves too thin. For some clubs, it meant being dwindled to few enough members that it was unrealistic to remain as a club. Interest groups are also affected by this. Given the choice to only pick one or two organizations, an interest group that has potential but no concrete staying power isn’t the hottest pick for most students.
At first, interest groups were just a way to give students a way to continue their previous club activities without the teacher supervision or the time slot in the club rotation. However, interest groups then took on the role of what used to be incubator clubs. Ideally, students who ran clubs that did not need a teacher’s supervision or mentorship could still officially hold activities without taking up the resources that another club might need, while students who wanted to start new clubs could begin as an interest group and show off their passion. Thus, interest groups became proving ground for up-and-coming groups that wanted an official spot in the club rotation and what SAS students especially thirsted for, something to put on their college applications. Nonetheless, interest groups never really turned out that way.
Lack of Communication
The main problem with integrating the system was the lack of communication of the new perspective. Students didn’t know how to look at interest groups because for the most part, interest groups were just old clubs. No one told us the role of the interest group in our ecosystem. There was a huge clash in the two ideas of what the interest groups were for. The lack of clearcut communication from Profa and the student council when introducing systematic changes also meant that for most students, they didn’t know what to look for when they wanted to start an interest group or go from an interest group to a club. They weren’t allowed at the club fair and it were told that interest groups would have another time to gather members.
From Profa herself, these are some of the things she and the rest of stuco looked at when making the decision on whether an interest group could become an official club or not. The first one is if the topic of interest resonates with the student body and community. While the club does not have to appeal to every person and can have different focuses on specific areas, it should be accessible for people who already are passionate about it or want to get into it. This is shown through how much the interest group grows from the group of people who start it to a larger group with consistent members. The second criteria is about showing effort and passion in a tangible way. One of the best examples of this is the Jazz Band club. They started as a passion project of Ms. Borodenko, the IB music teacher and PAC director. She gathered students who were passionate about music and they committed to weekly practices and signed up for performances. They grew in size and their efforts spoke for themselves when they performed at Kerry Parkside, or during Friday Night Lights. This looks different for each interest group, but having events that are accessible for the rest of the school to see or participate in whether as an audience member or contributor is an excellent indicator of the passion behind the people who run the group as well as what the group can actually do for the community.
Another important factor to consider is whether the group can find a teacher who likes the idea and agrees with what the group is doing and can back them up. Jazz Band is the prime example since Ms. Borodenko was really passionate about it with the current execs and they pushed for rehearsals and performance opportunities.
One of the more intangible factors that are considered are the longevity of the club. The club needs to be able to be passed on to the new students that come in every year. Adding on the layer of having a faculty sponsor, do they also see the longevity of the club? When a teacher can speak on all of these things alongside the students, it makes an extremely strong case for being granted official club slots and the following funding and exposure.
In our conversation, Profa also offered some advice for people who were looking to improve their interest groups or become an official club. First and foremost, go and talk to her. Her classroom door is almost always open because she wants students to come in and talk to her. Not only does this help students find clarity in what they should improve on, it helps her find out what she can improve on. No system is perfect, but if the complaints about the system never reach the people who can solve these problems then nothing will change.
The next tip she has is to use the space around us. Different organisations at school put posters up all the time, like tri-m does for open mics and prom com does for events like homecoming. Similarly, interest groups could and should be doing the same and to larger extents. Because they don’t have the big fancy name of some of the honour societies, taking initiative to show the students what is happening in the group is even more effective in garnering exposure and potential members. With the competition for resources, newcomers have to fight for a plate of food.
SAS culture has also been a contributor of the downfall of interest groups. Students have their own passions and if they truly wanted to integrate their passions into the school and their college apps, starting an interest group from the ground up and becoming a club would be valuable for your resume. Students can use this as a way to pursue their passions while also looking ahead towards college while in high school. On the other hand, the club system could also be more pragmatic with the environment and mindset of the student body. It should be okay to also want to start clubs for the sake of college since as Profa herself said, a large part of high school is preparing for college. Not only should that look like building similarities in the environment but also being accessible for students to take the steps they want to actually get into college. It isn’t a bad thing to look forwards, but what SAS lacks right now is balance. We need to strike a balance between competition for college and doing something that each person loves. As a new part of the school, interest groups haven’t been the most successful but hopefully in several years, both sides can inch more toward a middle ground. Interest groups should gain more recognition and credibility, while the idea of an executive position in an official club is less sought out.