By Gil Alon
Opinions Managing Editor
This year the school administration wrongly refused many clubs from setting up stations at the club fair during Step Up day, harming the clubs and the incoming freshman.
Each year in June, eighth graders are introduced to Newton South by visiting the building and learning about what to expect in high school on Step Up day. Usually, during Step Up day, eighth graders are able to walk around a club fair where all clubs have booths to attract new members.
However, this year not only were clubs like Candy Corn not allowed to perform for the eighth graders, but the club fair was severely limited to only include the Roar, Denebola, Leo, fall sports teams and student government, which harms the membership of many smaller clubs at Newton South.
Christopher Hardiman, who is in charge of overseeing all the clubs at Newton South, issued a statement over schoology to all club leaders that there would be no club fair this year.
“There will be NO CLUB FAIR during Step-Up day,” wrote Hardiman. “The organizers of the event have decided to make some format changes and it also seemed repetitive to me to have a fair on step-up day AND the first day of school for 9th graders so this change will be permanent.”
However, a couple days later Vice Principal Candice Beerman reached out to the newspapers, falls sports teams, and student government to ask representatives to come to the club fair. No explanation was offered as to why the club fair was limited to only specific groups by the administration.
The rationale offered – that it seemed redundant to have a club fair during step up day and the first day of school – has been invalidated by the fact that South did host an exclusive club fair without announcement to the larger community. This new setup greatly harmed the recruitment strategies for smaller clubs.
“Other than the club fair there’s no real outlet for smaller clubs to access the incoming freshman, so club fairs are basically the only way you can say hey we are a club, we are looking for members and you have an opportunity to gain members,” said Carina Ramos, president of Girl Up, a club at South.
The club fair is one of the only chances lesser known clubs have to gain members. By prohibiting all these clubs the chance to reach out, a new wave of membership is gone. For those potential new members they lose the benefits like friendship and helping the community that comes out of participating in clubs.
Furthermore, this can later on discourage new clubs from forming because clubs now do not have enough opportunities to sustain new membership.
Additionally, the wrong extracurriculars were chosen to attend the fair as smaller clubs need the exposure to inform incoming freshman that they exist.
“People already know that there is a soccer team and a field hockey team but people won’t know that there is a club for whatever their specific interest in,” said Ramos. “For a club like Girl Up ,people won’t know that it is there and people won’t carve out a time for it in their schedule as they are building extracurriculars, unless they know it is there.”
Even though Ramos highlighted the importance of sports, fall athletics do not need the exposure of a club fair. As incoming freshman decide on extracurriculars a whole class of options are not even thought about due to a lack of awareness.
When looking to clubs that perform like Candy Corn this harm from a lack of exposure magnifies.
“We got a lot of interest sparked by [our performance at Step Up day last year]. Everyone in the group at the moment and people who just graduated got their interest in the group sparked by that performance,” said Isaac Chapin, a sophomore and a member of Candy Corn.
Specifically, looking to Candy Corn, many if not all incoming freshman are unaware of how an actual performance looks and thus might choose not to try out. Additionally, that performance reaches out to all incoming freshman and inspires them to try out as they see fellow peers making an audience laugh.
Even though Chapin stated that the group might be allowed to perform during the first week of September he warns that that time is stressful for incoming freshman who are stressed out about school and might not think to take a risk and try different extracurriculars.
Additionally, not offering all clubs an opportunity to inform eighth graders that they exist harms the purpose of Step Up day. This afternoon is meant for eighth graders to be introduced to Newton South and more importantly to how their life will be like at Newton South; however, those students missed an intrinsic component of student life at Newton South: clubs.
One of the truly impressive aspects of South is the extensive number of student clubs offered. The incoming freshman were not truly shown the opportunities at Newton South and thus were not shown a true preview of South, which is the whole purpose of Step Up day.
These students are now walking into south without knowing the full picture of opportunities offered at South.
Additionally, it will be much more overwhelming to them once they finally learn of all the clubs in late August or September. Now, they must deal with actually starting school and figuring out which of the many clubs to sign up for; however, if they were shown all the club options in June, they could have the summer to decide or even to know what to expect coming in.
Step Up day is the first glimpse incoming freshman receive of South and that should be a feeling of overwhelming excitement to feel the enormous opportunities that South holds and provide each club an equal chance to attract new members.
