Club updates

Northview clubs adapt to the changes brought by this year’s virtual setting 

A few major Northview clubs have undergone drastic transformations. CORRECTION: Quake’s president clarified that instead of not participating, they are still unsure about the chances of not being able to participate.

Graphic by Grace Peng, Managing Online Editor

Manasa Premanand, Features Editor & Sameeksha Agarwal, Staff Writer

Clubs are one of the highlights of Northview; the variety of them, the special events each of them offer, and the bonds one makes from them all make clubs unique. This was all very possible to achieve when school was face-to-face. However, due to the current situation with COVID-19, some clubs have had to make significant changes to operate online. Others, however, are almost the same as they would be in normal circumstances. An example of these clubs is one of the most popular ones at Northview, Debate Club. This club attends around 28 tournaments over the course of the season, including regular season and championship tournaments. Some of these competitions will be online, while the setting is not decided yet for others. Conducting tournaments online has actually opened up some opportunities for Debate Club. 

“We're planning on going to tournaments and a lot of different regions of the country that we normally don't get to go to tournaments to because they're far far away,” Matthew Cekanor, one of the coaches of the Northview Debate Club, said. 

Online debating has been a good experience for the members of the club. They have had a very successful start to the season online. Although debaters are not able to speak as fast as they are accustomed to, the experience is still similar to the one of actual debating. 

“Online debating is sort of a good enough facsimile to the point where a lot of kids who have done debate or speech in the past get to do something that's very similar to what they would do in person but have to do it online,” Cekanor said. 

Remote learning has also made it more difficult to check in with everyone on the team and make sure they are doing alright. At the end of the day, Debate Club is pretty close to how it had left off and is still able to do all the things it is expected to do. However, there are some obstacles along the way, which the coaches and students need to figure out how to overcome. 

“I would say we're not as efficient online, but we're at a point where we're okay with that,” Cekanor said. 

Beta Club is also experiencing some difficulties operating online. The main events that club members participate in are Beta Convention and Stress Awareness Week, along with other in-person events hosted with local organizations. However, some of these cannot occur this year because of the current COVID-19 situation. The club usually contacts about 20 organizations asking to host events with them, and 10-15 of them reply back consenting to the request. However, this year, only two of them agreed to co-host the in-person events. This has resulted in a lot of extra work for the Beta officers. 

“Every week all of our officers are looking for new opportunities, emailing different organizations, seeing if they need any help, and there’s just a lot more work in the way,” Ramsai Kandepu, the co-president of Northview Beta Club, said. 

Additionally, it is hard to keep members accountable through online Beta. Meetings are conducted via Microsoft Teams rather than the usual ones held in the auditorium. The issue with this is that students can easily join the meeting on their computer, but then may go somewhere else, so it is difficult to know if they are actually present during the meeting. 

“In an actual in-person meeting, everyone’s more active and participant because they have to be there,” Kandepu said. “So overall, in-person Beta is better than online Beta.” 

Leaders of other clubs, such as Quake and NEHS, reciprocate this sentiment. Minwoo Kim, president of Quake, a dance club centered around Korean hip hop, general dancing, and urban dancing, notes the difference in the quality of teaching dance routines in a remote environment in comparison to in-person meetings as being a difficulty he has encountered while proceeding with virtual activities for the dance group. As president of Quake, it is Kim’s job to teach the choreography of the dances to his fellow members and provide them with corrections and critique on their execution of the dance. However, because in-person practices cannot be held, for the time being, Kim has resorted to reviewing his members’ dances over video. 

“The level of difficulty [of the choreography] increased because they’re having to learn this choreography on their own and then I am seeing their draft video and saying things that I see that are problems and that could be improved through the video, but I can’t show them physically how they can improve,” Kim said. 

During conventional school years, Quake would perform at Beta Convention, International Night, and various other school events, but as of right now, they are worried about the chances of not being able to participate. In place of this, the dance group has been posting videos of their dance routines on Instagram, in order to share their performances with the public. 

Conducting club activities virtually requires meticulous pre-planning, an experience National English Honor Society (NEHS) advisor Matthew Kamibayshi underwent during the summer vacation before the school year started. NEHS is an academic club dedicated to students accomplished in the language and literature fields, and in order for virtual NEHS activities to proceed without delay, Kamibayashi and NEHS student leaders spent a great deal of time formulating virtual activities and events for the club. 

“We spent a lot of time over the summer thinking about opportunities we could offer so that our members could get their service enrichment hours in a virtual environment,” Kamibayashi said. “We planned and were able to come up with a schedule of activities and events that would allow people to get their hours in a remote environment.”

Service hours are mandatory for members of NEHS; the students are encouraged to utilize their talent in literature and language to positively impact the community. Unfortunately, the volunteer opportunities NEHS members have in a virtual setting are limited, so the members have had to shift their focus from the community to the in-school aspects of the club instead. 

“We are focusing more on the in-school enrichment side of NEHS and this involves things like encouraging other peoples' love of language [and] of literature and of that of our members as well,” Kamibayashi said. 

However, despite these setbacks, NEHS, as well as clubs like Beta, Debate, and Quake, has benefited from this less-than-ideal situation. The implementation of virtual activities has led club leaders, members, and advisors to be considerably more purposeful in their planning. 

“I think [remote learning] is forcing us to be more intentional and more efficient in the way that we plan the semester’s activities,” Kamibayashi said. “We have to be extra intentional about that this year in order to make this a reality, and I think that the skills that we take away from that will be really valuable in future years.”