On Thursday, September 8, Berkeley High School students had the opportunity to sign up for clubs during the annual club fair. The fair took place during periods one through three and advertised a diverse range of clubs.
The club fair allows students to learn about different extracurricular activities they can take part in to meet new people and gain new experiences.
Students were also able to start their own clubs and display them at the fair.
For many clubs, the fair is the main way they spread the word and gain new members.
According to Evelyn Chou, a junior and member of the BHS Women’s Student Union, the club fair allows students to learn about new clubs.
“We don’t really do a ton of other marketing outside of this, so it’s a good way for us to meet new people and introduce new people to our club,” Chou explained. According to Chou, the BHS Women’s Student Union works to create a safe environment for women while trying to fight inequality at BHS. “We really want everyone to feel safe and accepted, and we want to make this school a better place,” Chou explained.
Senior Adele Motamedi, a member of the Ultimate Frisbee Team, feels similarly that the club fair is the main way for clubs to reach out to people. According to Motamedi, many of the games last year in the girls league didn’t go very well due to the lack of people.
Sophomore Katelyn Burmester attended the club fair to check out the clubs and for the free candy.
“It’s super fun to learn about different clubs and opportunities I wouldn’t have known about otherwise, and it’s nice that the fair isn’t during lunch, like last year,” Burmester said. The clubs at the fair represented a wide variety of activities including sports, politics, and hobbies.
Among the political clubs was the BHS Green Team, a club dedicated to sustainability and the environment. Senior Naomi Nickolaus, a member of the BHS Green Team, said the club organizes projects to make the community more sustainable and informs people about the environment. These projects include trash pickups and elementary school teach-ins, and they plan on teaming up with other environmental groups in the future.
“Our goals this year are to build a stronger climate coalition and hopefully do a little bit more climate action and maybe some political action,” Nickolaus said.
Another club at the fair was Amnesty International. According to junior Amelia Monagle-Olsen, a club member, it is devoted to human rights and raising awareness about issues in the community.
Amnesty International has worked on making calls to representatives about gun violence, writing letters to free prisoners who were unjustly incarcerated, and speaking out for reproductive rights.
“This year a lot has been happening in the news,” Monagle-Olsen said. “I just want to give people the opportunity to do something and put any anger or feeling they have into action.”