Currently, at Stevenson, there are over 40 student-organized clubs all with different goals and passions. Imagine a club where students get to talk about their passion, whether it is chess, cars, or sending refugees to schools. We asked some clubs about their purpose, contribution to the community, recent activities, and their future plans.
The first club we had our chance to interview was the Chess Club, created by two leaders, Jacky Lin and Gordon Lee. As a club that was blossomed over the past two years, the Chess Club has attracted over 50 members throughout the years. For these students, the club serves as a haven for both recreation and chess mastery, relieving their stress from their academic lives. Jacky Lin explained their recent activities: “Recently, the Chess club not only organized weekend activities through the Stevenson Faculty, but we also organized our Chess Tournaments during community time. We also organized a wellness activity for the midterms.” Jacky Lin also stated on one of the reasons he made the club: “I made the club because I thought chess could be a way of communication and a refresher for students. By having a strong community of students who are interested in chess, we can all cooperate to enjoy the game and learn the game.” In this interview, the Chess Club introduces their fervor for the game, and their functionalities through chess mastery and education.
Also, we interviewed the Car Club founded by Pheobe Zeidberg and Owen Alderson. The Car Club, also a club that has been around for several years, has a goal to make students to be involved with cars, starting from simple oil changes to teaching how to drive manual cars. Phoebe Zeidberg explained the passion of the club through saying, “We are trying to have our club members to have an access to work on cars… for example, boarding students who don’t have access to cars being able to participate on simple oil changes.” Also, Phoebe Zeidberg explained, “We are planning to do simple oil changes for the faculty, by making the faculty pay for the resources, and making the students do it for the faculty, which gives them a oil change without any work, and gives our car club members experience on cars.” The Car Club emerges as a hub of automotive enthusiasm, leaving skid marks on the road to knowledge.
Also, Stevenson Students offer a club that volunteers to provide refugees to schools, coming from a kind heart of community service. RIS, Refugees in Schools is club dedicated to providing educational opportunities to refugee students by integrating them into local schools and helping them adapt to their new environment. This year being its third year, the club currently has about 75 students as members, being one of the biggest clubs in the school. Club Leader Charlie Wilson elaborated on the club’s activities by stating, “RIS hosts multiple fund raisers every year. The money we get from those fundraisers is then used to give scholarships to refugees to fund their education.” Also, Charlie Wilson added that the club recently have been planning on fundraising activities, explaining, “We have discussed more ideas for fundraising and how there is a soccer tournament coming up that we might be running the snack shack at. We also discussed that we are going to connect with the president of the organization to organize more events and Zoom meetings with other people in the refugee camps.” Through the interview, we were able to take a peek on what the club has been doing recently and their primary goals.
Additionaly, Stevenson Students also have clubs about culture—for example, the Korean Culture Club by Wonjin Eum, Alex Chung, and Chloe Yi advertises and introduces Korean culture to the community. The Korean Culture Club is one of the biggest clubs in Stevenson, having meetings hosted with 50+ members. The club tries to introduce Korean culture to students who have interest, by having the club leader stating, “The club welcomes everybody, not only just Korean students but students from any culture. Our goal is to introduce Korean culture in a friendly way, and make members appreciate and enjoy the culture through a learning experience.” Also, club leader Wonjin Eum added some details about the recent meetings, stating, “We had a little activity for the Korean holiday Hangeulnal, which is a day of celebrating the creation of the Korean language. We made our members write their name in Korean as an activity, and also planned for the future meetings on what will be done.” The Korean Club gave a great introduction about Stevenson clubs about culture.
Lastly, Stevenson offers a club where participants get an indirect experience in diplomacy and international relations—the Model UN club. As a year that has been around for decades, the Model UN club is currently the oldest club in the whole school, with 80 members and 20 members who actively engage in the conferences. Model UN, short for Model United Nations, is an educational simulation program where students take on the roles of actual United Nations delegates, representing various countries, to debate and solve global issues. Club Leader Alex Srofs stated their recents meetings to be a planning day, explaining, “In our recent meetings we met to discuss with our delegates into the upcoming conference in December, about what the conference entails. We also went over basic procedure for the conference and research for our new delegates, and for our returning delegates, we worked with them on getting a kick start on the conference.” As the Model UN club has been managed for such a long time, the club shows that they are locked in for future meetings and conferences.
There are still a lot of clubs other than the ones I have introduced. For example, we have the Sports Analysis Club, History Club, the Japanese Club, and even more that you can find. The clubs are the heart of the community, by being made and maintained through mutual interest of students. The liveliness and activeness of the clubs define the student body.