The risk of losing clubs The perilous future of Sequoia clubs after the graduating senior class leaves.

The senior class is comprised of a very driven group of students. These students are leaders in sports, classes, the community and clubs on campus. So what will the school do once this class inevitably graduates?

Nicholas and Christopher Kwok are two seniors with leadership positions in clubs such as Science Olympiad, March for Our Lives, Business Club and Model United Nations (MUN).

Balancing the workload of a rigorous course load and club leadership can prove to be challenging. With many club leaders forced to balance school, club responsibilities and extracurriculars. With all of these tasks there simply isn’t enough time in a day to do it all.

All of this work can add up, “We’re spending two hours on each club [per week],” Nicholas Kwok said. “It becomes a mess, we just stay up very late doing stuff.”

This workload consists of many different parts. Some of the responsibilities include planning meetings, signing up for club activities, managing finances and more.

With this level of workload it’s a daunting task for club members to take over leadership positions. This puts clubs at risk of crumbling when the current leadership graduates due to lack of experienced leadership, or no one taking control over the club at all.

“I’m concerned about the Fruit Troops club,” Helena Landels, Debate and Fruit Troops club president said, “It’s mostly seniors so there’s concern there.”

However some clubs are optimistic about their future and are prepared to pass down leadership roles.

“We just had Debate club elections for next year,” Landels said, “I’m very confident in the debate leadership.”

Clubs have a multitude of different ways to deal with passing down leadership after the current leaders graduate, one way is simply having younger members to pass down leadership to.

“In the past [the club members] were mostly our friends, but we knew it would be our final year running the club,” Nicholas Kwok said. “So we were really specific in our recruitment in targeting underclassmen.”

BY DAVID RAYMOND AND THOMAS JETT Sports Editor and Staff Reporter

club will continue at the same level or at all by just having positions filled.

“There’s a possibility that the new (Science Olympiad) leadership may not know how to run it well,” Kwok said.

Some clubs such as Science Olympiad have very specific needs which makes it hard to easily implement new leadership.

The gap in participation can be explained due to the changing learning environment in recent years.

“I don’t know what it is, but after COVID people aren’t as invested in clubs as they used to be,” Landels said.

The consequence of this gap of students not joining clubs in the pandemic is a gap with participation being scarce in the junior and sophomore classes. This partially explains why the senior class has so many leadership roles at Sequoia.

“We don’t see sophomores and juniors in our clubs so much because during the pandemic, it was hard to convince them to join and provide their lunch period to our club,” Christopher Kwok said.

This plan seems to have worked for some clubs to fill in the gap that will be left by graduating seniors. The young core of new leaders should be able to allow clubs to continue to thrive.

“All of our clubs have leadership positions in place, except for March For Our Lives,” Christopher Kwok said.

Just filling positions may not be enough, having positions filled does not mean that a

However this downturn in clubs seems to be easing as the pandemic wanes as well.

“We have a thriving freshman class in all of our clubs now,” Christopher Kwok said.

Hopefully despite this gap in participation in the junior and sophomore classes the future classes will help these clubs continue.

“Hopefully clubs continue to grow, but also it’s uncertain,” Nicholas Kwok said.