Student sign up for clubs during club rush. Photo by Jacob WinkleBy Aozora Ito, Sports editor & Ally Lenguyen, Managing editor
On Friday, Sept. 2, the first Inter-Club Council (ICC) meeting of the school year was held during lunch to discuss the new changes in club policies, and to welcome all the new clubs that had been renewed and added for the school year.
During the meeting, Administrative Student Body (ASB) Club Commissioners Khoa Phan (‘17) and Sabella Tran (‘18), welcomed all the new clubs present and congratulated former clubs on being renewed again. Phan opened up with running all the club presidents that were present through the regular club policies and bylaw agreements that needed to be made, handing out copies of the new club rulebook for the year.
One of the most notable changes of club laws this year was that clubs were no longer allowed to charge for membership fees. It was discovered over the summer that this law has been in place for many years already, and while the former club commissioners were aware of this, they had not enforced it as strictly.
“When I brought it up to the ASB advisor, Mr. Lamar, he communicated with other schools in the district and found out that none of their clubs pressed membership dues as well,” Tran said. “If you think about it logically, members should not be forced to pay a fee to a club of their interest to have to validate their membership.”
Tran explained that while clubs were not allowed to force students to pay a membership due, they were allowed to ask for a specific donation amount from their members upon joining the club to help raise the money membership fees previously brought in.
Although a huge change is that clubs are no longer allowed to collect membership fees from students, most of the club laws have actually stayed the same from previous years. The reason some of the clubs were “rejected,” was due to their lack of constitution; however, they simply requested the clubs who were missing them to submit a new constitution.
The two club commissioners added that any other questions in regards to club laws and what clubs were allowed and not allowed to do, could be found in the updated club handbook.
“I’m excited for the newest addition of clubs to our campus this year! We found many of them to be so creative and purposeful to our school that it was difficult to reject any new clubs out at all,” Tran said.
This year, with about nearly 70 clubs being offered to the students of FVHS, Tran and Phan expressed their excitement on all the upcoming events, including Club Rush, which will be held Sept. 14 – 16 around the bowl.
Following the club rush, students should keep an eye out for new, additional events for the clubs. The clubs commissioners wish to increase interaction amongst the clubs and the student body this upcoming year. One idea Phan and Tran has is to allow curricular and equal access events to sell food after school hours.
“This benefits the clubs since it is a fundraising event, and also the students because who doesn’t love a quick food fix after a long day of school?!” Phan said, excited for what’s to come from the clubs of the 2016-2017 school year.
