Every year, Club Day brings new opportunities for students. Tam offers a student-run clubs available, each supervised by a teacher during lunch.
Despite the excitement of Club Day, including passionate attempts by clubs to gain members (offering candy in return for sign-ups, for example), a common criticism of Tam’s club system is the issue of so-called “ghost clubs” – clubs that disappear due to abandonment by their student founders.
“I think that taking on the responsibility of a club is very challenging for both students and the teachers,” said math teacher and leadership adviser Ryan Fedoroff. “I think that students always have good intentions when starting a club, but struggle to find members who have a passion and commitment to their cause and this leads to clubs not moving forward after club day.”
“People lose motivation [for running clubs] within weeks because it is more work than they expect,” said junior Aimee Moses. “I don’t think most people who start clubs realize the responsibility it takes to keep them going.”
Some students feel that club presidents do not take the commitment seriously enough. “Students should be held accountable for abandoning clubs they created,” junior Harley Berman said. “It’s rude to end the club because it doesn’t fit with their schedule.”
The problem of ghost clubs is one that Fedoroff and English teacher and Leadership adviser Jessica Variz, the new supervisors for ASB/Leadership at Tam, seek to fix.
“We were discussing having one of our committees oversee clubs as part of their responsibilities – meet with club presidents, get involved in helping clubs plan fundraisers, and communicate regularly with clubs on campus,” Fedoroff said. “We wanted to see how leadership at Tam could help support the clubs to be more successful.”
Despite being new to the ASB/Leadership environment, Fedoroff and Variz are successfully helping students in the program plan new ways to ensure the organization of school activities, including Club Day, which which this year will be on Friday, October 11.
“Since we are new to leadership at Tam, we are just getting to know how everything works,” Fedoroff said.