Club leaders and students alike have likely gone through the process of being overwhelmed by the number of clubs on the Lexington High School Activities Website, or the many forms needed to be filled out to establish a new club at LHS. 

This year, there are currently around 150 active clubs at LHS, which is a decrease from the 170 clubs that ran during the 2024-2025 school year. So, has the administration done something to manage the increased demand for establishing new clubs?

This year’s process for club approval actually started at the end of the 24-25 school year, when students wishing to re-establish their running clubs had to go through a pre-registration process.  

“We [gave] existing clubs an opportunity to pre-register for the following year, so that it trims down the number of steps that they need to take in order to re-up,” Michael Horesh, a dean of students, said.

This process also allowed the school to gauge the types of clubs that were running and take note of which niches might become repetitive should a similar club be established.

“A lot of work [in the club establishment process] has to do with vetting new clubs and deciding whether there was an existing club that had a similar or even the same mission statement,” Horesh said. Having documented records of mission statements before new club applications opened ensured that LHS saved room for students with different interests, and therefore reserved a place at LHS for new communities to form. 

The administration has made improvements in prioritizing clubs as spaces for new thoughts, but student leaders and clubs are still being rejected from the official LHS club list.

“I honestly think even 150 clubs is a lot, but even with that, it’s hard. This year, we got rejected again to be a club. I also think the process to make a club is also really complicated, and I think it could be simplified,” Anika Chakrabarti, a senior at LHS, said.

The process can be overwhelming and stressful because of the strict 150-club cut off, which causes many students to experience rejection despite proposing clubs that are entirely new and unique. 

Alongside the limit of mission statements that Dean Horesh mentioned, clubs may also be denied for other reasons, such as their need for certain resources. 

“We tutor students at LHS, and we hold concerts at LHS, but it’s really hard to do events there,” Chakrabarti said. 

A multitude of factors go into the decision of whether or not a club can be established. First the administration looks at the diversity of existing versus new clubs at LHS, and they then go on to see if the high school has sufficient resources to support the new club. 

The administration will continue implementing changes to ensure a smoother process in the future.