Despite the onset of distance learning this school year, students have continued creating and developing new clubs. The Oracle talked to three clubs to find out what their plans are for starting the school year in an online environment.

Conversation Club

Inspired by his sophomore year World History final, Senior Ethan Huang formed the Conversation Club to create a safe environment for meaningful discussions on relevant and hard-hitting topics. The club has hosted conversations on topics such as immigration and the presidential election, all in an effort to include diverse opinions from the whole community. 

“We try to make [each conversation] as open ended as possible and let people say whatever they feel they need to share as long as they are respectful to each other and are open to hearing other perspectives,”  said senior Indu Danturti, vice president of the Conversation Club.

On Wednesday, Sept. 16, the club will be hosting their first of multiple discussions on race. The first of which will be focused on the role of School Resource Officers on campus.

“The role of SRO’s on campus is a very challenging topic, because a lot of people have widely different opinions, so we are really hoping this discussion can be a place where students especially can openly share their experiences,” Danturti said.

As distance learning continues, the club is hosting all of their meetings and discussions online, which comes with some disadvantages.

“When people are talking on Zoom they don’t feel as connected, and don’t feel the same energy as when you are in person, ” Danturti said.

The Conversation Club hopes to continue to promote relevant conversations for the benefit of the entire school’s community.

“We as a club aren’t promoting any specific advocacy for change, but we want to allow people to hear more perspectives and be aware of what needs to change,” Danturti said.

Care Club

With their shared interest in medicine and love for giving back to the community, sophomores Maya Narang and Lillian Casazza started C.A.R.E Club to connect with peers with the same passions. 

 C.A.R.E club, which stands for Community Awareness Recovery Efforts, aims to combine local volunteer work with medicine by helping people affected by diseases and illnesses in many different ways. 

Most recently, C.A.R.E club has started a mask drive to raise money to donate to WeHope, a local homeless shelter, and have already almost reached their goal of $200. 

“Especially with Covid-19, it has taken a toll on our community and we hope to help with any way possible,” Casazza said.

Besides their current focus on Covid-19 relief, the club hopes to be able to help raise the spirits of children in hospitals by donating toys and board games. 

Like most clubs, C.A.R.E club has had to work around the challenges that come with running a club that is unable to meet in person.

“Everything is a lot more individually based now, we were hoping that if we weren’t online we would be in a class making things to donate and working together, but now we have to do that all individually,” Casazza said.

Video Production Club

Making videos ranging from animations to dance videos, the Video Production Club serves as a creative outlet to many students.

 Fiona Liu, president of the Video Production Club, founded the club as a sophomore interested in doing Freestyle Academy, but since the program is only for juniors and seniors, Liu wanted to create a space to practice and learn more video production skills as well as share them with others. This year the club is eager to focus more on teaching other students the basics of video editing and production. 

With the transition to distance learning, the Video Production club has faced some difficulties getting people together to film videos and now mostly meets online to practice their production skills and writing scripts. 

“A lot of people have concerns about shooting videos with other people so we haven’t been able to do much,” Liu said.

The club plans to do virtual movie nights over Zoom and share the videos they make with each other throughout this year. In the future they also are looking to collaborate with other clubs to make promotional videos for them. 

“We hope to [continue to] make more videos and get more people interested in making films,” Liu said.