Clubs Reflect on Underclassmen Participation
By EVAN DIERBERG, JOONYOUNG HEO, and ROXANE PARK
Despite some speculation that clubs on campus have seen a general drop in participation among lowerclassmen, most clubs have not experienced any significant decrease in membership.
Due to the many restrictions and precautions established during the pandemic, club participation had notably dwindled. There was concern this year that clubs, perhaps from lasting effects of COVID-19, had not recovered to pre-pandemic numbers. On the contrary, however, students and faculty recount that most clubs have either retained or significantly grown their membership relative to previous years.
Competitive clubs on campus have easily observed significant increases in participation. “Debate had more than 60 people turn up last Tuesday,” senior and Daniel Webster Debate Society (DWDS) cohead Colin Jung said. “Preps and lowers in particular seemed excited. One told me it was a great meeting. They were excited to continue with debate and very impressed by the exhibition round. The numbers were much higher than in recent years.”
A large part of the club’s consistently high membership rate is its reputation and competitive nature. “Debate always gets a lot of members as one of the major clubs on campus,” senior and DWDS cohead James Yun said. “It’s hard to compare with membership before COVID, but our turnout this year has been good. I think the current board has done a great job of getting a lot of engagement.”
Mock Trial was a similar case. “Tryout sign-ups have been increasing at a linear rate,” Jung, who is also a cohead of the Mock Trial club, said. “Our information session last Thursday had great turnout. Last year was historically successful, and this year we’ve managed to match it, with more than 60 people trying out and at least 30 more interested. We haven’t seen a drop in membership at all.”
Clubs showcased their creative and eye-catching posters at Club Expo. Victoria Liu
The Exeter Economics Association — another club with competitive components — also attracted many newcomers. “Over the last two meetings, we’ve had more than 40 members per meeting—that’s a lot compared to previous years,” upper and cohead Dhruv Nagarajan said. “A lot of the participation comes from the underclassmen because they’re the most interested in joining the club. But we’ve also seen higher retention rates of upperclassmen.”
This positive trend was not limited to the most competitive clubs. “The a cappella groups had really good turnout,” upper and cohead Emma Sordi said. “We had over 40 people audition and we could fill a lot of our groups with those people. Interestingly, we had many more lowers than preps. I don’t really know why, but it was nice to get lots of new lowerclassmen anyway.”
Many clubs that did not see a notable increase in membership still managed to retain their numbers from previous years. “Around 15 people showed up to Philosophy Club last Sunday,” lower and cohead Sam Altman said. “Last year our attendance fluctuated a lot depending on the time of year, but in general our numbers now certainly would’ve been close to our peak last year. It’s hard to tell how long people will stay throughout the year, but most of our new attendees were actually new faces and new preps, so that was nice.”
Republican Club had a similar experience. “Our numbers are pretty close to last year’s,” senior and cohead Leo Braham said. “Especially near the beginning of the term. It was something like 20 people. We were meeting for dinner so people were coming in and out, but it stayed around that number. It’s a good group, especially with all the new faces this year. I think interest will only grow as the year goes on and more presidential candidates come to Exeter.”
Performance-based groups also saw growth following last year’s revival of in-person events. “Our big event for Exeter Association of Rock (EAR) was the assembly we had last winter with the whole school in attendance, which helped us get a name out because I think COVID really killed a lot of the momentum of that club,” senior and cohead Ayaan Akhtar said. “We’ve been having a full-school assembly every year for decades now, but there was a three-year gap in between, which is almost enough to phase it out if you’re thinking of people who are here for four years.”
EAR saw immediate success in spring following winter’s full-school assembly. Akhtar said, “We had about 13 bands sign up for a spring show and about five sign up for the winter assembly. So our numbers more than doubled, just from a little bit of exposure.”
The success of these clubs had a common theme. As COVID’s dwindling presence made space for info sessions, word of mouth, and a general increase in club publicity, these clubs jumped at the opportunity.
“Our a cappella groups had lots of interest even before club night and lots after, all due to PR representation around campus,” Sordi said. “Also helpful was that we announced the audition for a cappella groups during concert choir, so that got a lot of people interested.”
Other clubs have explicitly promoted opportunities for competition. “For economics, we were able to advertise our club success on a national level in terms of competitions,” Nagarajan said. “That really enticed a lot of the younger students to join and give it a shot. Quiz bowl was very enticing as well.”
Nagarajan, who also helps to lead the Business Club, said, “This year’s meetings are a lot more multi-dimensional than in past years. We have case studies, guest speakers, lots of general events, and business competitions. Those speak to a broad range of students.”
Certain clubs even coordinated their meetings to avoid scheduling conflicts and attract as many lowerclassmen as possible. In particular, Jung, who is also a cohead of the Legal Society, Ethics Forum, and Catholic Exonians, saw great turnout with this strategy.
“These clubs have an upward trajectory because we go to great lengths to make sure they’re accessible,” Jung said. “We make sure to work with those clubs and not against them, and that’s possible because I’m in charge of many clubs that similar interest groups tend to go to. We’ve really seen high turnout because of it.”
Alternatively, some clubs have seen results based largely on chance, particularly as extracurricular interests shift from class to class. “It is kind of a problem that a lot of the student musicians are in the class of 2024,” Akthar said. “So we’re trying really hard to reach out to the lower classes or underclassmen as well. We do have some people in the 2025 class who seem interested, which is always promising.”
As with all generalizations, of course, a handful of clubs have indeed seen a slight decrease in membership, for a number of other reasons. New clubs, for instance, struggled with drawing new members because they felt overshadowed by more popular and well-established clubs.
As a cohead of the newly formed Go Club, upper Davido Zhang suggested a way to combat this issue. “From the logistics side, for Student Activities, what they could have done better for new clubs is send an email saying, ‘Hey, these are the new clubs.’ That’s it,” Zhang said. “There should be a way to bring extra attention to just the new clubs somehow, because a lot of the clubs do depend on the previous coheads or participants introducing them to the new students, and new clubs just don’t have that.”
In contrast to her a cappella club, Sordi observed less interest in auditions for DRAMAT, the drama club, for a similar reason. “We didn’t publicize the way we should have,” she said. “We should’ve talked to people in plays. The club is going through a dry spell probably because of the low publicity. Last year there wasn’t much club presence on campus, either.”
The amount of time and energy that members must commit to certain clubs also plays a role. “There are clubs that a lot of people want to do that are also a large time commitment, but there are also a lot of high-commitment clubs that are very specific in interest so they don’t bring in a lot of new members,” upper Byran Huang said, a cohead of the Robotics Club and its competitive MUREX team.
Another issue is that new students traditionally sign up for more clubs than they will actually participate in, then stop attending them a few weeks later. Many feel pressured by their friends to sign up for similar clubs. In addition, older students tend to lose interest in participating if they feel that they cannot gain something from it in return.
“A lot of the people who attended Philosophy Club last year might have been lowers or uppers looking for coheadships, so now they don’t attend, or they simply don’t have the time this year,” Altman said. “It’s a shame because it’s difficult to maintain people without an incentive in the rushed environment of Exeter. To keep people in clubs if they don’t have aspirations to be cohead, you need to keep them interested somehow. One can pretty easily do that if the club is a competition or something of the like, or really any competitive event a club can lead up to, but that’s not in line with the nature of most clubs.”
“I mean it all starts with competition, right?” Zhang said. “The only reason why we are so inclined to get all of these positions is because people around us are getting them. It’s almost as if it’s purely peer pressure.”
Many students also feel that the role of clubs on campus, which has always been a source of friendly competition, is shifting from previous years.
“I think it’s an overall trend ever since COVID that people have less enthusiasm for clubs, and I don’t know why,” Zhang said. “I’ve heard people say it’s related to grade inflation, or it’s just that students don’t want to do clubs, which could mean that there’s a different type of students going to this school. If you’re committed to clubs, that basically means that you have to be a part of a community. Otherwise, what’s the point? Then you’re just doing all this extra work. I feel like people are reluctant to do this now or maybe have just found better ways of balancing academics and their free time.”
For his part, Yun considered the factor of stress, which has infamously been a defining aspect of the Exonian experience for decades. “Someone told me that during COVID they made some sort of rule that you can’t have any new competitive clubs be made from that point on, meaning clubs that compete interscholastically,” he said. “I think the motive was to take away the competitive nature of clubs, because it was stressing kids out too much and giving them too much of a workload,” he said. “And I think you can kind of see that shift in culture across all clubs and just across campus in general.”
As it turns out, then, there remain several unresolved issues about the nature of club participation and the lack of exposure for certain clubs. Still, while the pandemic raised concerns about dropping student engagement in these extracurriculars, there has not been any general decrease this year. Club leaders are hoping this trend will sustain itself and wind upward in the coming months, as the community continues to adjust to new norms in the post-pandemic era.
