From Korean Student Association to Raza Latina, representation and student voices across campus have been amplified by the influx of new cultural clubs.
In an attempt to unify and further their impact, Vice Principal Sharon Freeman worked with cultural club presidents in the fall of 2025 to create the Diversity Council.
“Diversity Council came up last year because, since we’ve come back from covid, we’ve had a growth in our cultural clubs on campus, and a lot of those clubs want to showcase their culture through presentations or activities on campus,” Freeman said. “We’re focusing on where some of our shortcomings are on campus, like where could we be more culturally connected.”
In addition to discussions about furthering cultural sensitivity, many first-time club presidents, such as Taiwanese Student Association president sophomore Charlotte Yang, feel the Diversity Council has made it possible to receive support and collaborate with other clubs.
“Taiwanese Student Association and Korean Student Association are collaborating together during Lunar New Year,” Yang said. “That was an opportunity we received we wouldn’t have gotten before.”
Similarly, Black Student Union president senior Nabayet Gebrehiwet believes being able to talk with other cultural clubs has given her more ideas to expand her own club.
“As a leader of the diversity club, you want to have a reference to go off of, like, ‘Oh, what are other clubs doing?’ Normally it would have been harder to do that,” Gebrehiwet said.
One problem the group noticed was the lack of opportunity for more recent clubs to hold presentations. In previous years, clubs like Raza Latina and Filipino American Student Association utilized a 50-minute period on a Monday to hold informative sessions, but this became unfeasible with the increasing amount of interested clubs.
“When it’s three clubs, that’s taking away instructional minutes from three days throughout the year. We’re up to 14 or 15 culture clubs now, and if we gave those that same amount of time, that would be pulling a lot of time,” Freeman said.
As a compromise, clubs are now given the opportunity to give presentations during tutorials in the theater along with lunchtime performances in the quad.
“While we obviously see and we want to support the students in bringing their culture on campus, we also want to respect the teachers and their educational time so if a group wants to do a presentation at all, it would be during tutorial,” Freeman said.
Along with the Diversity Council, SCHS held their first multicultural night on February 5, 2026. During the event, clubs set up booths and gave performances for families and students to come and enjoy. Prior to the event, Japanese Student Association’s president and senior Sora Pham shared her thoughts on what was to be expected.
“Basically, clubs can sign up to sell food (and) have information booths,” Pham said. “For JSA, we’re planning on having a booth with games and origami, just sharing a little bit about our culture and also having a performance. We plan to do a traditional bonadori dance, and we’re really excited.”
Jewish Student Union president junior Silas Dubin believes that, while the multicultural night is a promising initiative, planning from the council needs to be more diligent.
“We attempt to plan stuff out, but we don’t have exact schedules or capabilities of what we can do,” Dubin said. “I think that with more instruction about what we can actually successfully do to spread diversity, we could probably execute a lot more and also (receive) a lot more support about our specific clubs.”
Pham highlighted the significance of diversity night as a way to promote cultural awareness and share traditions with each other.
“What stands out most to me is the fact that, how it’s going to work, is it’s a collection of all of our cultures, and not highlighting just one,” Pham said.
By incorporating changes such as Diversity Council and multicultural night, more people may be able to share different parts of their identities while simultaneously learning about others.
“We have so many different voices,” Freeman said. “We have, I think, over 60 languages that are spoken on campus. We have such a variety of people that knowing the truth of someone’s culture and the reasons that people are connected in one way or another is really important.”