Club commissioners aim to enforce stricter guidelines

Graphic by Nicole Lee

A graph of the overall trend of an increasing number of clubs in ASB each year from 2018 to 2023.

To ensure regular meetings of the more than 90 ASB-approved clubs on campus, senior club commissioners Carine Chan and Josh Ta have enforced stricter guidelines on monthly meeting minutes forms and implemented a three-strike system to ensure clubs are holding regular meetings. 

“Since we have such a large abundance of clubs, we need to make sure the clubs that are present are actually active with their work and putting in effort rather than being a ‘college filler’ club,” Ta said. 

Ta said that setting stricter guidelines on when minutes are due has placed pressure on clubs to put more thought and effort into their meetings. 

Newly revised guidelines on club minutes introduced strikes for each failure to complete club minutes or if they miss a meeting — generally, two meetings are required each month except for those with long breaks. When a club reaches three strikes, they are cut.

Some clubs have  reacted to these changes more negatively, Ta said. Students now actually have to do work and be on time, revealing whether or not clubs have truly informative content and committed members.

“It exposes the trashy, non-committed clubs [from] the highly active and well-functioning clubs,” he said. 

Ta hopes these practices continue in the future as there were many complaints last year about club participation and activities. Commissioners received reports that members of certain clubs had left due to a lack of meetings, effort and participation.

“We have clubs to make a positive impact on our school, our school’s community,” Ta said. “We have clubs to allow students to become more social, to learn and meet people who have the same interests they have, to learn about cultures and to allow our students to become more open minded to create a diverse and better Saratoga High School.”