Junior Raylene Danielle Cruz heads to the Animal Assisted Happiness club at lunch, her highlight of the week and a nice break before going to her next class. For Cruz, hosting club meetings is a great way to relieve stress, share a common love of animals and show people how animals are able to bring people happiness.
“For people that are more introverted, they could find happiness, the same happiness (they find with) people but with animals, and it really brings together that community,” Cruz said.
Any SCHS student is able to join club meetings during lunch, such as the Animal Assisted Happiness club, Jashan dance club, Ecotech Club, Women in Business club and many more. These are clubs with new council members leading.
Junior Gauri Kannanoor Elavanmadam co-leads the new Jashan dance club. There are planning meetings on Tuesdays for council and full club meetings every Friday. She enjoys continuing her practice of dance but found some difficulties with recruitment.
Kannanoor Elavanmadam noticed that other schools in the Bay Area already have similar dance clubs, and they also have a large population of people experienced and interested in that dance form. Since SCHS does not have that population yet, Kannanoor Elavanmadam said, it is difficult to recruit new members to Jashan.
“Getting the word out to people is a bit hard because we don’t have the same population of people that would want to join the club as other schools might, and since we’re new and a lot of the other schools already have established teams, everyone’s kind of skeptical,” Kannanoor Elavanmadam said.
Through holding auditions and having new members join, Kannanoor Elavanmadam had the chance to meet other students.
“It allowed me to really see what I like, how everyone is as a dancer and also just connect with people that I wouldn’t have met before,” Kannanoor Elavanmadam said.
Another club, the Ecotech Club, strives to solve environmental issues in the community and implement future technology. Club president freshman Vikram Atmuri believes the goal of Ecotech Club is to pin down problems and sustainability issues and create change using technology and engineering.
“The materials that were used for the (homecoming) floats, those were just thrown away. No questions asked,” Atmuri said. “That’s something that we can work towards, reusing those materials or being able to recycle them.”
Atmuri finds short-term and long-term benefits of creating the Ecotech Club during his first year at SCHS.
“I get to share my passion with other people and find peers that are like-minded,” Atmuri said. “(I want to make) a difference in the community, whether that’s environmental, or just as a community.”
Women in Business club president freshman Vani Nair started her club to share her love of business and especially to cultivate women’s interest in the topic.
“I’ve always been passionate about business, and I haven’t really been around people that shared my passion… I really wanted to meet people like me and give them the opportunity that I wish someone gave for me,” Nair said.
The Women in Business club uses flyers, social media and word of mouth for outreach and recruitment. Nair recommends organizing thoughts, planning out meetings and deciding who to have on council to build up a sturdy structure for the club.
“Starting a club is a very long process,” Nair said. “I remember making a journal that helped me organize everything. I’ve made a to-do list with steps on it, and I got started with defining the club’s purpose…”
The Women in Business club has been working to advertise through the club fair as well. Vice president freshman Natalie Suresh expanded on how the events in preparation for the club fair and the steps taken to advertise have helped make people informed about the new club.
“We had music going on, food and everything. It was just a great way to connect, but it was also where we could do our work, too. And so we did,” Suresh said. “We made our little Instagram board…where we take pictures in it… We made little charms to hand out to everyone, and it was just really cute.”
Suresh tries to increase the size of her club and outreach to new people, as well as spread her values of inclusion of a minority group being involved in the business field.
“We want to expand this club into, obviously, more people coming, but also for the next four years that I’m here,” Suresh said. “It will be a huge club in which people are really inspired by what we do and what we teach.”