Kitsch Magazine: Fall 2015

GOING CLUBBING
why we compulsively join clubs in college
by Melvin Li
During the 2014-2015 academic year there were over
a thousand student organizations at this university—almost
one club for every kid at my high school. Download the 25-
page Orgsync PDF and count them if you like. These clubs
include the Film Club, the Adult Film Club, the Surf Club, Take
Back the Tap, the Teszia Belly Dance Troupe, the Pokemon
League, and societies for a host of different countries around
the world (except for Kyrgyzstan). Walk-on clubs like Rainy
Day are always happy to take in new members at any time,
while more competitive clubs such as the Whistling Shrimp,
Cornell Bhangra, and Yamatai actively encourage all who are
interested to come to their auditions. And to the great relief
of our parents, mentors, club recruiters, and even ourselves,
many of us here at Cornell eventually find our paths in the
organizations we join.
Stepping onto Cornell’s campus for the first time, my
biggest concerns were being away from home and not being
able to make friends among the 3,222 other freshmen who
enrolled that fall as the class of 2017. I was sure I would end
up spending the whole year hiding in my room. Instead, as I
walked around campus the following day, I was quite literally
swept into the Big Red Marching Band, one of the first Cornell
student organizations to begin recruiting in the fall. To make a
long story short, I spent the remainder of freshman year going
to class and going to band, where most of my friends were, and
that was perfectly alright with me.
The Bank of Mom and Dad, however, wasn’t as pleased
with my progress. That summer, I was fed a double cocktail
of advice that countless knowledgeable adults tell college
students every year: “You need to be more active on campus”
and “You need to network and form connections.” As an English
major I had to get to know other English majors and people who
shared my interest in writing, and I figured the easiest way to do
that was to join writing clubs on campus. So come sophomore
year I pulled a stunt common among students who had never
been to Club Fest before. I headed down to Barton Hall and
signed up for three clubs that fit my interests: The Cornell Daily
Sun (The Princeton Review’s favorite college newspaper), Rainy
Day (Cornell’s undergraduate literary magazine), and of course
the lovely little magazine you’re reading right now. I knew I
was wading into a lot of commitments, but I wanted to devote
a lot of my free time to extracurriculars after having almost
none freshman year.
What I did not expect was that I would end up
spending most or almost all of my free time with clubs and the
people in them. Now in my case this might be because I suck
at time management, but many college students who devote
themselves to extracurriculars do so for reasons ranging from
passion about the club’s function, to a desire to spend time
with the people in their clubs or pad their resumes. Don’t get
me wrong—I love parading around at football games, covering
events on campus, reading literary submissions, and writing
articles like these. But I, like all students here, also have classes,
exams, papers, and other important things that I’m supposed to
worry about. My parents sent me to Cornell first and foremost
to get an education, and so for me tomorrow’s classes take
priority over today’s clubs. But getting a good education and
dedicating oneself to clubs don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
With their most immediate goals fulfilled (attending
stimulating classes at an elite university on their way to a
lucrative job), students would be expected to attend fewer
clubs after getting into college, but actually the opposite has
been observed. Students at Cornell and most universities in
the United States participate in many times more student
organizations than the typical high school student. So what
about extracurricular activities keeps students involved
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