DECA allows students to get a taste of business

December 7, 2011 — by Roy Bisht and Matt Foley

With a new president and vice president, the business-focused DECA club is being revitalized this year and will begin its competitive season against other schools this spring.

With a new president and vice president, the business-focused DECA club is being revitalized this year and will begin its competitive season against other schools this spring.

DECA (Distributive Education Club of America) aims to have more students involved with business at a younger age and also hopes to give them experiences in industry that they can use later.

“Being a business club, we usually practice and compete in various competitions and events,” club president senior Krishnan Raman said. “By doing this, we hope to help high school students understand the business world more.”

The DECA competitions pit local schools against each other in business-themed games and assessments. Competitions for DECA consist of written exams that are taken as an individual as well as some that are taken in teams.

“During the competitions, we also give a presentation to judges and parents,” Agrawal said. “The teams that perform the best get awards and whoever gets the most awards wins.”
Another part of the competition includes games that involve the stock market and entrepreneurship and topics such as “principles of finance,” “principles of marketing” and “principles of business management and administration.” All of these events are timed and scored on a point scale.

“We really look forward to our competitions because we realize that they can help our members learn a lot more about how they can succeed in the business world,” Raman said.

However, DECA is not the only business club on campus. A rival club is also offered on campus called FBLA (Future Business Leaders of America). The main difference between the two is that DECA’s highest level of competition comes at at international level while FBLA’s highest level of competition comes at a national level.

While DECA has not any formal meeting yet, they plan to begin meeting weekly starting in mid-December in order to prepare for their spring competitions.

“Along with our club meetings, we also hope to attend workshops held by Monta Vista, because they have the nation’s second best DECA chapter,” Agrawal said.

Even though Raman believes that the club has great potential, there are numerous disadvantages to being an emerging club on campus. Without much of a history, DECA has only 15 members and lacks the type of member support that bigger clubs such as Interact and Key Club receive.

“As of now our main goal is to attract more members,” Raman said. “After we do that, I think that we will start having much more success in competitions.”

For more information on the club, please visit www.deca.org.

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