One day in P.E., sophomores Sofia Kritikopoulos and Kaylee Ngo were sparked to bring girls closer together when they noticed that many gossiped within their own groups and cliques. The two started a game and enjoyed seeing girls come together, so they founded the Girls Empowerment Club to try to make a difference at SCHS. A few months later, junior Alex Dacus started the Feminist Club in an effort to promote women’s rights on campus.

The names of GEP and Feminist Club may give the idea that they’re the same thing, but their intentions are different.

In GEP, girls get together and talk about whatever’s on their minds, such as the pressures of high school.

“We wanted to create a safe space for girls,” Kritikopoulos said.

Dacus, who is president of the Feminist Club, said her club tries to promote gender equality on campus by spreading awareness about women’s rights.

Although the names of some clubs are similar and may be alike in some ways, there are substantial enough differences that set the clubs apart.

Any student can start a club as long as they have five members and a teacher who’s willing to be an advisor. According to Vice Principal of Activities, Angela Kretsch, due to the guidelines, Leadership receives many similar proposed club charters. To prevent alike clubs, Leadership often emails the president of the existing club and new club proposer to make sure they are different.

However, that doesn’t stop from clubs having nearly identical titles, which may confuse many students.

The Animal Welfare Club and the Animal Rights Activist Club seem like doppelgangers, but they each have unique values.

Dacus, who is also president of the Animal Welfare Club, said that her club is based on service activities and focuses on volunteering with animals directly. The Animal Rights Activist Club, however, is more anti-animal testing and mainly raises money for other animal rights organizations.

Freshman Francisco Mejia, a member of both, said that there is really only a “bit of a difference” between the two clubs. He joined both because of his passion for animal rights.

Perhaps the two most similar sounding clubs are the Video Game Club and the Video Game Enthusiast Club. According to freshman Nicholas Stampolis, president and founder of the Video Game Enthusiast Club, there are substantial differences. The Video Game Club focuses on playing video games, but the Video Game Enthusiasts Club analyzes and discusses them.

“We’re expressing our passions for video games,” Stampolis said.

Elijah Porter, a member of the Video Game Club, said that he was glad there are two different video game clubs on campus.

“It’s good because there’s more than one place to go if you want to play games,” Porter said.

Junior Julianna Aguilar thinks differently.

“I think [the clubs] have very similar concepts and should be merged into one club,” said Aguilar.

Though merging clubs may increase the amount of people in the clubs, they wish to remain separate because of their differences.

SCHS currently has 100 active clubs on campus, some of which have similar names. But if students don’t find one that interests them, they can start their own.