The college has approximately 20% fewer student clubs than it did before the pandemic, but new organizations have been sprouting up regularly over the past couple of semesters.
Lea Brisbane of the Office of Student Engagement said approximately 50 clubs have either started up or resumed operations since the campus reopened in 2021.
The Muslim Student Association is one of them.
“I said that I would give it another try, right?” Muslim Student Association President Abdulrahman Ahmadzai said. “I went to ask students, and this time I was able to open it. And now I feel really, really happy.”
Brisbane, a leadership and involvement specialist, said many clubs dissolved or paused after AACC shut down in-person classes and moved to online learning after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
“I think by the time people got a grasp of ‘OK, now we’re switching into online learning, we’re switching into how to accommodate and let people in society still function,’ a lot of the student leaders were probably gone by that point,” Brisbane said. “There’s already a really high turnover of our students here [pre- and post-pandemic]. … Student leaders are always changing.”
Among the clubs that returned are the International Student Association, the Esports Club, Students Out to Destroy Assumptions, the Architecture Club and the Drone Club.
“It really depends on the students and the motivation,” Brisbane said. “And if they have the drive to kind of pull and do it again.”
At first, said Architecture Club President William Menjivar, “The initiative to get [the club] back up and started wasn’t there.”
Then, the club’s faculty adviser approached Menjivar about taking it over.
“Professor [Jeffery] Roberson took that initiative and approached me with an opportunity, and I took it,” Menjivar said.
Menjivar said the club’s leaders have had trouble recruiting members, a challenge other presidents have said they are having as well.
“The only trouble I’m having is reaching the newer students,” Menjivar said. “Since all the marketing, I’ve really done it by word of mouth. … So that’s a challenge, but we’re definitely working to make it known.”
Ahmadzai, a first-year cybersecurity student, agreed.
“At the beginning of the semester, I faced some challenges because I wasn’t able to find students,” Ahmadzai said. “I almost gave up.”
Some clubs, including Amaranth, the student arts journal, Campus Current, the student newspaper, and the Super Science Club pushed through during the pandemic without disbanding.
To stay alive, a number of science-themed clubs that had operated pre-pandemic banded together to form one, larger group.
“And as soon as COVID kind of was, like, stopping, it just grew and grew,” President Alex Branford, a third-year plant science student, said.
