Club Council established to bridge gap

Aiming to unite clubs, the Club Council takes its first steps into Marshall.

Co-founders and juniors Josephine Blanton and Manahil Jawaid aim to encourage communication and collaboration among clubs. The Council’s sponsor is Health and P.E. 9 teacher and clubs and activities assistant director Laura Campbell.

“The issue is that we’re not able to connect that gap between clubs and students,” Jawaid said. “We want to be able to help bridge it. We also want to offer a board of executives for each club so they’ll be able to collaborate with one another and we can have more general involvement within clubs.”

Blanton first came up with the idea during a leadership conference with Riverside High School.

“They had their own Club Council,” Blanton said. “We used a lot of their resources, and we were able to figure out how it would work best.”

As Blanton began to develop her ideas, Jawaid joined her in solidifying the club.

“We definitely want to hear the clubs’ voices because we know that there’s a lot of different flaws here,” Jawaid said.

“And that was what first got me started, because my freshman year and sophomore year I tried to apply to a bunch of different clubs, and it was just a whole maze of trying to figure out how to navigate everything.”

The Club Council will aim to hold quarterly meetings. However, if two clubs want to do a project together, they’ll meet with Blanton and Jawaid periodically to plan.

“Our first meeting was more about introductions, learning about the clubs that are involved,” Campbell said. “We plan to add more club representatives throughout the year because some of the clubs didn’t have a chance to meet yet.”

Campbell said any concerns presented by club leaders at the meeting were listed as future action items for the Council.

“The overall idea would be that clubs can work together; that they can have a stronger presence for those events, fundraisers [and] donation drives,” Campbell said.

The Club Council will meet at the beginning of second quarter, with hopes of having more club representatives as the year progresses.