Club Night

By ERIN HAN, TANIA LUCHAK, ROXANE PARK, LILY RAMPE, THEA VAUGHAN

On Saturday, Sep. 16, at 8:00 p.m., hundreds of students waited outside Thompson Gym, clamoring with excitement. New students hoped to join communities of students that shared their interests and discover new hobbies to pursue; returning students came to join the fun and see if they had missed anything in previous years. When the doors opened, they were greeted with tables blanketed with posters, candy, and souvenirs presented by smiling upperclassmen who urged them to stop by. It seemed impossible to choose where to start. This is Club Night, the annual event where all 142 clubs from Badminton Club to Biology Club advertise to the student body and attract new members. 

With so many different clubs competing for attention, the club leaders each found unique ways to attract new students to their stations. 

Afro-Latinx Exonian Society (ALES) co-head and senior Alex Rosen focused on his station’s appearance. “We talked with our advisors to get a tablecloth, which we thought would give our booth a more sophisticated look, as well as food, which we thought would attract more people,” Rosen said. “[It] definitely worked!”

Upper Davido Zhang, a co-head of the Chinese Students Organization, described his club’s creative method to garner sign-ups. “We went for a boba lottery, and it definitely worked out because this year it was a rule that during the club expo, you’re not allowed to put a QR code there to directly sign up for the email list,” Zhang said. “We attracted a lot of attention, and got over 100 sign-ups [for the lottery.]”

Senior and Biology Club co-head Aden Lee adopted a more conversational approach. “We promoted our club through talking about things we’ll do in the year. We’re going to make kombucha, do some medical diagnosis activities, and also help people prepare for science competitions like USABO (USA Biology Olympiad), ISEF (Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair), and JSHS (Junior Science and Humanities Symposium),” Lee explained.

Characteristically, the Robotics team used NFC cards, which make a notification appear on devices wirelessly by touching them to the card and lead to their MUREX team website. “We thought it was a different, more special way to distribute links rather than QR codes,” co-head and upper Byran Huang, one of the masterminds behind the idea, said.

“But in general, you just have to yell and also you have to get candy,” lower and Beats of Asia co-head Sophie Yu said. 

“Just mostly word of mouth is the best way to advertise clubs,” senior Colin Jung said. Jung serves as a co-head for Debate, Mock Trial, Legal Society, Ethics Bowl, and Catholic Exonians. “I lost my voice for several hours after, but it’s good fun. There’s a lot of energy and I like to feed off that.”

Co-heads and prospective members alike agreed that Club Night is effective and important in catalyzing club involvement every year. Senior and Word! cohead Silja Pope recalled her experience as a new student navigating the lengthy list of clubs offerings. “I remember my first year here I was really excited for club night because, [though] I had gone through the list of clubs, there’s something different about really talking with different people about the club that they’re really passionate about, and maybe getting a little sample of what they do during each meeting.” 

She added, “And you [also] stumble upon tables and clubs that maybe you would’ve scrolled past on the website.”

Similarly, Jung agreed on Club Night’s effectiveness: “It’s the first encounter that most people, especially new people, have with our clubs on campus. And it’s an excellent opportunity to get to know all the offerings we have here.”

Some co-heads noticed general trends in the type of Exonians that came to their tables eager to sign up for their clubs. Pope reflected, “I think for Word!, [people who sign up] are oftentimes interested in creative writing and music and things like that. I ended up having a lot of conversations with people about meeting times, because a lot of them played instruments or were in some sort of singing ensemble that met during the time we were suggesting. So I think those types of people kind of tended to drift toward Word!”

This year’s location in the Thompson Gym was an unfamiliar setting for returning students; in the previous two years, the event had been held outside in the Academic quads and in the larger Love Gym, chronologically. For Lee, the smaller space facilitated conversations with these prospective students. “I think that Biology Club had a really good smaller space so we could talk to people more directly,” he said. “It was less chaotic, and I liked where we were specifically.”

But to others, this change wasn’t as positive. According to Yu, “It felt disconnected. Thompson Gym is a lot smaller than Love Gym.” 

Multiple upperclassmen mentioned preferring the outdoor format in 2021 and suggested returning to it for future club nights. 

“I liked doing it outside,” upper and Yu’s fellow BoA cohead Minjae Suh recalled. “They did it outside [my] prep year and we had tents in front of Wetherell and the Student Center. I like the vibe of [having the event] outside better, because it was warm and you could be as loud as possible and it’s not echoey. It doesn’t get hot and smelly; you can also play music. I think it just worked better.”

“Bring it outdoors again,” Zhang urged. “I thought that before it was perfectly fine. You could have, say, the Robotics team bring out their race car, you could show all your trophies, you could put more snacks out if you have more space.”

Despite the whirlwind of positive emotions, this wasn’t the only obstacle that students faced during the event. One of the primary concerns was confusion about QR codes and the sign-up process, as mentioned by Zhang. “The rule of not allowing to scan QR codes during the Club Expo is not favorable towards any new club just because nobody has heard of it and you’re really focusing your audience on just the new students and that makes the job a lot tougher,” he elaborated.

Prep Sophie Morrow and senior Hope Gantt agreed that giving clubs physical sign-up sheets would be a better option. “Previously, we would just sign up at the booths, which is better in case you forget to sign up afterward,” Gantt explained. 

Commenting on this year’s digital sign-up list, Morrow added that you first have to find the clubs at club night, and then “you have to go home. You have to sign up over the computer.” 

The process is longer than necessary, leaving room for a common human error: forgetfulness. “I saw a lot of people taking pictures of the clubs that they wanted to join, but sometimes that doesn’t translate into actually signing up for the email list,” Gantt said. Students agree that a physical sign-up sheet would be more effective than signing up online for the email list.

Zhang also mentioned another barrier the coheads had to address: the low height of the tables. “Most of the clubs stuck their posters below the table but people [couldn’t] really see them, so people just had to hold up their posters. If we thought that through earlier and somehow managed to make our posters stand on the table, that would have been a lot better,” he said.

For coheads of multiple clubs, Club Night also involved scrambling around from table to table. “I wasn’t able to get to all the clubs,” Huang confessed, as in addition to Robotics Club, he was operating the stations for the Exeter Computing, Science Bowl, Science Olympiad, and Engineering Clubs. “Every club has multiple co-heads, so all the clubs turned out fine. There was always someone there to manage the table.” 

Zhang and his fellow co-heads devised a way to make Club Night easier for all of them. “For the clubs where we had more co-heads, we did shifts, so one person stood at the table for 30 minutes and then we would rotate. It works. Most clubs do it and usually it’s not a problem since bigger clubs have more co-heads.” 

Lee agreed, “It was hard, but we divided it up well, so it wasn’t too bad.” 

An additional ongoing issue that co-heads face at the start of each year is new students joining too many clubs at the expo that they eventually drop out of. “Preps tend to go to the first few meetings and then don’t go to most of their clubs after that,” Jung explained. 

Suh provided one reason for this, saying, “I remember my prep year, the only reason why I joined so many clubs was because of peer pressure.” Preps tend to join many clubs because their friends are as well during club night, but often drop out a few weeks later because they aren’t actually interested in these clubs. 

According to Jung, “Every club wants to be the club that stays,” so clubs find themselves competing not only to gain members at club night, but also to keep their new members. 

This continues the cycle of new students facing peer pressure from clubs. “Now I have to peer pressure other people,” Suh said. “Once you’re on the email list, you start to think about [the club] a little bit. It’s better than if you’re not on the email list at all and you genuinely don’t know that the club exists.” 

Jung conceded that peer pressure can be “a necessary thing to do” as clubs try to gain more members.  In the end, while it has the side effect of some new students dropping out, not all do, meaning it is still an effective way to gain new members.

Despite these obstacles, both new students and coheads of multiple clubs still find Club Expo to be very effective. As a cohead of many humanities clubs, Jung said that “It’s an excellent opportunity to get to know all the offerings we have here. We got around 86 signups for Mock Trial. For debate, we got several hundred signups, but for the actual first meeting, we tracked an attendance of 62, which is at least a record in the last decade. So it’s really good results we’re getting.” 

From the perspective of the students, it still remains an effective way to get involved. New senior Amrita Sankrit said she “got to learn so much about all the clubs here on campus, and it was a very informative experience.”

With its own bittersweetness, Club Night continues to be an enjoyable annual tradition for every Exonian on campus. It opens up new opportunities to make friends through shared interests and stay involved with those interests despite the restless schedule at the Academy. 

ests and passions. These programs created a very memorable summer for many Exonians.