New clubs shine at Club Day, old ones merge

September 26, 2012 — by Rohan Rajeev and Minu Palaniappan
clubday
Hundreds of students mobbed the quad during Club Day.
Shouts of excitement echoed across the quad as club officers promoted their respective clubs during lunchtime on Sept. 19 for the long-awaited annual Club Day event .

Shouts of excitement echoed across the quad as club officers promoted their respective clubs during lunchtime on Sept. 19 for the long-awaited annual Club Day event .

“People like Club Day because it really shows all the diversity in our school and allows students to meet people who have the same interests with them,” said ASB Club commissioner senior Tiffany Yung. “Clubs give students a life outside of academics.”

This year, new club ideas needed to surpass stricter standards set by the ASB to be approved. Thirteen new clubs were passed out of around 20 proposed ideas.

“We didn’t want to admit clubs that were made to impress colleges,” she said. “It’s not genuine and the club won’t last if the leadership is like that.”

According to Yung, because the school has a diverse range of clubs, there are bound to be clubs whose boundaries overlap. As a solution, the ASB encouraged clubs to combine.

The newly formed Science Professions Club, headed by juniors Tommy Chiou and Nick Chow, was asked to merge with senior Jackie Gu’s Science Club, a club that garnered a lot of attention and interest during the event.

“Nick and I are grateful that ASB liked our idea and approved it,” Chiou said. “We’re still in the process of talking with the Science Club officers about possibly bringing our idea to their club, and we’re confident that we would be able to work something out with Science Club.”

Senior Kevin Chen’s new Philosophy Club presented as an official club on Club Day. Last year, Chen held unofficial discussions on Mondays in English teacher Natasha Ritchie’s room with about 15 regular members.

“Since we were all close friends, most of our opinions were similar,” Chen said. “Our discussions were actually more like agreements.”

Chen hopes to publicize his club to students of all grades and all ideas.

“One of our new goals is to give underclassmen a headstart in the philosophical field, especially those potentially interested in taking Lang in the future,” he said. “It will remain a noncompetitive learning environment in contrast to the school, and students will have freedom in what they say because a teacher is not grading them for their opinions.”

Yung appreciates Chen’s passion in his club.

“His club doesn’t have officers, because he doesn’t want it to be about college,” she said.

Also in the array of new clubs was the Ultimate Frisbee Club, created by seniors Doug Jones and Spencer Goldman.

“I basically wanted to form the club because I wanted to have fun,” Jones said. “I play a lot of frisbee.”

Jones hopes to form two teams to play against each other and one big team to play in non-competitive scrimmages and even some tournaments against other school teams.

“The goal will be to get everyone to play and just substitute everyone in and out,” he said.

Jones was pleased with his club’s presentation during the event.

“Club Day was actually really good for us,” Jones said. “We didn’t have any incentives like food or candy, but we still managed to get more than one hundred people to sign up.”

Freshmen even got in on the action of Club Day, as the new novel writing club Scribbleblots, led by three freshmen, showed off their exhibit. The club is led by Ashley Chen, Melissa Magner and Michelle Cen.

Other freshmen like Arjun Ramanathan were happy to take in the wide array of clubs at the high school.

“Some of the clubs were really unique,” Ramanathan said. “I’ve never seen anything like Club Day. It was great.”

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