According to the Lexington High School’s Clubs & Activities website, LHS currently has 161 clubs. However, some of those clubs have a relatively low number of members. This brings up some questions, namely, is there such a thing as oversaturation of clubs, especially when member counts are very low? Not necessarily. If resources are available to support all the clubs at school, then there’s no reason to dismantle a club with less than five members.
Clubs are started for several reasons, such as advancing a common goal, engaging in community service, and gathering people with common interests. However, there are concerns that small clubs can’t accomplish their goals.
“If you want a club, you want it to be successful, and you can’t have a successful club with five people. At that point, it’s just a friend group and not a club anymore,” Lillian Zhang, a freshman, said.
This is also important given the limited number of spaces to meet in and teachers willing to become a club advisor.
“Bullet Journal Club had some issues with space and timing, making it very difficult for us to start our club. Eventually, we found a space, but it was during I-block rather than after school and in an office rather than a classroom,” Navya Manuja, a sophomore and co-president of the Bullet Journal Club, said.
However, there’s another side to this story. Every club has to start somewhere, and even small clubs deserve the chance to grow and contribute to the community. It is easy to undermine the various small clubs around LHS.
“The Music Discussion Club started [as] a friend group who had discussions about music they liked. The fact that it was an official club also motivated the leaders to keep putting work into it. As a result, the club has grown within the last two years,” Justin Aramati, a band teacher and advisor for the Music Discussion Club, said.
Some clubs may start out as small friend groups looking to do something bigger, and obtaining the status of a club gives them the resources they need to work towards their goals.
“The difference between an official LHS club and a friend group is access to resources. If you’re a friend group, there’s stuff you don’t get that you do get at LHS, like a guaranteed meeting space and a meeting time. You get the support of a teacher who’s always willing to get involved,” Aramati said.
In addition, there are alternative solutions to the lack of resources for clubs. Clubs with overlapping interests can be combined and moved around the school depending on the space they need. For students looking to demonstrate their leadership skills, there are a variety of clubs that students can dedicate themselves to and eventually gain leadership positions in.
Gaining members can be challenging—therefore, they should not be disbanded solely because of their size.
“If we get in a situation where we’re ruling out the possibility of a club being a club just because it’s a small group of friends, I think we run the risk of eliminating the club program because that’s kind of how they all start. And they deserve time to grow. Things don’t happen overnight,” Aramati said.
