Declining club rush participation

Clubs are a great way to meet people, especially when you don’t know many people. I remember walking out around the school on club rush freshman year and thinking to myself, there’s a club for everyone here. I was still skeptical about the school, but walking around and seeing the sheer number of clubs that I could join helped to ease my high school fears a little.

That was the best year for club rush, as the past few years have seen a smaller number of and club activities.

For the past couple of years, instead of having club rush during a class period or tribe time, it is now at lunch. Instead of having a full twenty to thirty minutes to talk to any clubs you are interested in, students are now expected to wolf down their lunch and look at the clubs in the same amount of time.

I started my own club sophomore year because of all the clubs that we had at the school and I wanted to try one out myself. My friend and I then started The Skeptics Society which was a type of religious discussions club. We started in the middle of sophomore year, so we didn’t participate in club rush, but last year, we were able to participate and got a full sheet of signatures.

This year, we only received five. And it could be because of waning interest in the club, which is totally possible. But it could also be a result of less time at lunches. 

Without TribeTime and long lunch on Fridays, students and clubs have less time to meet during the day. Anytime I attended a meeting for NHS or another club, there was enough time. TribeTime allowed clubs to organize their meetings in a one-hour time frame and let me choose the best time to eat my own lunch as well. 

With the way the bell schedule is now, students and clubs have less time to meet, which could be the reason why the list of active clubs gets shorter and shorter each year.

My own club’s future is up in the air at the moment. I’m not saying I know the solution, but I speak for many when I say this new schedule does not fix the problems created by TribeTime. Our student-run clubs and schedules have suffered because of it.