With more than 80 different extracurricular activities now offered to residents of the Marshall community, students are encouraged more than ever to participate in activities beyond their classes. However, most of these clubs and activities are centered around a specific interest that not everyone may share or require students to invest time that they don’t have.
“I never really have time after school. And some of the clubs, the way they’re set up, just don’t interest me,” freshman Thomas Gipko said. Gipko prefers for clubs to be less structured and more open.
As a result, the option to create a new personally-tailored club has been offered to students. So how exactly does one accomplish this process? And with the ever-expanding number of activities already offered, is it wise to continue creating more activities?
Like many other endeavors, the process of creating a club begins with paperwork. First, a student looking to create a club must submit an application that includes a description of their club and a constitution detailing its purpose and how it will function to the administration. In addition, a student must garner a number of signatures from students interested in the topic. The forms required to go through these sections of the process can be found on the Marshall website under the student activities section.
“It wasn’t that difficult; there was a lot of interest. There were also a lot of people that will support you just because they like the idea of starting a club,” freshman Quinn Lipetz said. Lipetz is in the process of creating a new fishing and kayaking interest club.
Finally, the student must have a teacher or administrator who is willing to sponsor the club.
Biology teacher Steve Obringer sponsors Lipetz’s kayaking and fishing interest club and sponsored the Marshall biomedical club last year.
“I think that extracurricular activities are a big part of a student’s experience, especially at the high school level,” Obringer said. “The more clubs that we have and the more visible those clubs are to students, the more likely they are to join those clubs and thus, diversify their high school experience.”
If the student has met all the requirements, the club will officially be established.
Some people believe that the department of extracurricular activities has been overcrowded. Many students, like Gipko, have limited time to engage in extracurricular activities, and these activities tend to overlap in terms of time slots and investments. Students can be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of activities and may not be able to decide which ones they would like to engage in and which they must pass up.
Despite this, most students are involved in at least one extracurricular activity. Some are even involved in several at once.
Junior Elizabeth Gardner is a member of both the National English Honor Society and National Honor Society, swims competitively, and is a tutor at the Writing Center.
“I think clubs and organizations are great because you meet more people within the school,” Gardner said. “If you aren’t a part of them, I feel like you’re restricted to just people within your grade and that’s just not as much fun. Marshall has an awesome range of activities that you can do and the best thing about it too is that you feel so motivated to start whatever club you want.”