One of Andover’s best attributes is also one of its most convoluted — the 120 student-run clubs and organizations. Each year, the club rally, held in Flagstaff Courtyard, is followed by an inescapable torrent of emails. If students miss the club rally and do not know who to contact about joining a club, they may never have the opportunity to do so. We should not let disorganization prevent students from finding their passions in the clubs available on campus. Last year, while running for the co-presidency, Rebecca Somer ’15 and David Gutierrez ’15 proposed creating a master list of clubs and organizations that would be distributed to students at the beginning of the year. Their proposal would enable students to easily identify which clubs interested them. An effective and accurate list would also eliminate the need for the insanity of the club rally and prevent clubs from wasting time self-advertising. In actuality, a PDF form of such a list already exists on PAnet’s “Students” page, yet it is largely unknown and rarely updated. The list still has last year’s club information on it. Seeing as we are halfway through Fall Term, the most popular time to join clubs has come and gone, and our Co-Presidents have done little to address the club situation despite the fact that it was one of the principal aspects of their platform. Frequently updating a comprehensive list of clubs and organizations is the first step towards remedying the problem, but the solution goes farther than just the creation of this list. Currently, if a student wants to join a club, he or she has to first figure out if the club meets at a convenient time and who the head is. Students then have to contact the club head to be added to the email list. To avoid the complications of this process, my proposed list would contain hyperlinks to every club that students could simply click on in order to be added to the email list. Clubs are a large aspect of the Andover experience and are an area in which the Andover Institute may be able to develop and support. The effects of making Andover’s club and extracurricular system more efficient and accessible would be long-lasting and a great implementation of the Institute. The depth and breadth of Andover’s clubs and organizations are what attracts many students to attend this school each year. Many of these students arrive only to be disappointed by the chaos and inefficiency of the club system. This should not be the reason that, at a place like Andover with so many opportunities, students do not get involved.
