“The club fair is a great opportunity to foster the school community and allow students to put themselves out there,” John Villavicencio, Berkeley High School’s director of student activities said.
The 2024-25 BHS club fair took place on Thursday, Sept. 5th, 2024, and was designed to foster student activity and community building. The fair hosts all of the clubs that BHS offers, and allows students to walk around and learn about different extracurricular options, share their passions and ideas, and get to know other students.
It’s a biannual tradition, and the clubs involved range from the Robotics Club, to Youth and Government, to Soccer Without Borders, and many more.
The fair was arranged by many different people, including Mr. Villavicencio and the commissioners of clubs, BHS juniors Sophia Nishioka and Sofia Bloom.
“Clubs are a really great way to get involved in Berkeley High (School),” Nishioka said, “The club fair is a great way to get that started.”
She expressed the importance of the spirited nature of the club fair in piquing student interest and accomplishing the purpose of the event, which is to get students more involved in the different activities that BHS has to offer.
Because the fair has such a wide range of clubs, communities, and organizations, it reaches a multitude of students with diverse interests.
“The fair really fosters a sense of community within the school, and with students in such close proximity, it’s easy to get to know new people and find shared interests,” Alex Verity, a BIHS junior, who runs the club Friends Without Borders, said. “Every club is different, and there really is something for every student out there.”
Finding BHS clubs can be incredibly difficult because there are so many options to choose from, and students may be unsure of what to expect upon attending. The club fair, however, combats this challenge effectively. It introduces students to club leaders, shows them what they will be doing rather than simply telling, and allows students to ask relevant and important questions.
The club fair isn’t only beneficial to students who are prospective club members. It gives club leaders the opportunity to display their hard work to a larger pool of students than they would have otherwise been able to reach.
“The fair is so nice because it’s a good opportunity for clubs to expand their reach and influence,” said senior Zulqarnain Sheikh, president of Youth and Government.
He recognizes the crucial part the club fair has played in drawing in new members for the program, and he hopes to continue to grow the Youth and Government student body with more fairs in the future.
New clubs can be hard to weave into school culture, but the fair aids in growing their membership and finding success.
“It’s nice that we can recruit new members at the fair,” Cormac Lee, a BHS junior and new club leader said.
New clubs often start with few recruits and need a push to gain enough members to function properly.
“The fair is really helping us recruit a lot of members and find people who have similar shared interests as us,” said Aarushi Bhandari, a co-runner of a new club, called Women in Literature.
Bhandari expressed her gratitude to everyone who displayed interest in her club, and how the event helped her share one of her passions.
The club fair is a chance for BHS students to be drawn into the beauty of clubs and what they have to offer students, and for student leaders to feel confident in their hard work.
“Because we have such a large school, we rarely see everyone all together. The fair is a chance for students to see their peers in action, and get to know each other on a deeper level,” Villavicencio said.