By Anyssa De Santiago
Every school year, the Associated Student Body (ASB) approves clubs that give students opportunities to explore their interests and connect with others. This year’s Club Rush happened during lunch on September 17-18, giving students the chance to learn about the many organizations available at Granada Hills Charter (GHC).
Student-run clubs provide outlets for a wide range of interests, including STEM, the humanities, the arts, and community service, along with other varied passions. This year’s new clubs include the Alternative Club, Pack a Smile, and the Dungeons & Dragons Club. Through these organizations, students and advisers hope to build communities around their shared interests and passions.
The Alternative Club, created by junior Kaylene Shirazi, brings together students interested in alternative culture, including fashion, music, and art. The club originated from a desire to construct a safe, accepting environment for teens to meet others with similar interests.
“I love how freeing it is to express myself and go against social norms, wearing what makes me happy and listening to music for people like me who simply don’t fit in!” Shirazi said. “There are definitely more people who feel the same, seeking a place to fit in and meet new people who can bond over shared interests. It felt like my calling to create this.”
The Pack a Smile club aims to spread positivity and kindness through services like creating care packages, collecting donations, and joining organizations. The club arranges a different theme every month for each package and completes them as a collective. The group, demand, or cause that receives these packages also varies every month.
Junior Tala Betinjaneh, president of the Pack of Smile club, hopes her club is an inviting space for those who wish to participate in charitable acts.
“Pack a Smile is open to everyone,” Betinjaneh said. “You don’t need to have a lot of volunteer experience or a specific interest in service to join. We hope to build a community where everyone has a role, whether that’s helping to plan a project, collecting donations, assembling packages, or simply showing up and being part of the team.”
The Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) club centers on the popular table-top role playing game. D&D is a fantasy game involving characters performing heroic quests to defeat evil that can be in the form of monsters and other rivals. These adventures are administered by the Dungeon Master (DM) who organizes and manages the game and rules for participants. President and senior Charlie Fuller hopes this club will provide a consistent, inspiring platform for all individuals, whether they have a history with the game or not.
“In the future, we hope to expand the D&D club beyond the size of previous game clubs at GHC, which generally die out after a few years,” Fuller said. “We’re trying to create a platform for people to get advice on the game and engage with its story and mechanics, but our primary plan is helping members meet other players and campaign with them on a consistent basis.”
Although these clubs focus on different interests, each one gives students an opportunity to find community and become more involved on campus. Through Club Rush, students can discover organizations that reflect their interests or inspire them to explore something entirely new.
