Starting a club is one of the most creative and beneficial ways to leave your legacy at MHS. A club can be for nearly anything, and it is the main aspect of highschool life that students are in charge of. A club can be a chapter of a larger organization, such as a non-profit or charity foundation. Clubs can also be completely independentestablishments, allowing students’ creativity to flow. If you have ever thought of a certain cause or activity that you feel is under-represented at the high school, beginning a club can be the best way to change that.

This past June, I realized this for myself. I found that no sort of Liberal club existed at the high school. I felt that starting this kind of club would not only impact our school, but also the society we live in. So I approached fellow Liberal Nick Vanderpool ’13 about my club idea, and he said he wanted to help out. Carol Scheffler, the club coordinator, was immediately interested in our idea. Nick and I walked into her office a few days later and described our ideas in more detail. She wasn’t sure if it was okay to start a politically one-sided club, but that she would ask Ms. Clain by September. In the meantime, she told us to think of a name for our club, and exactly what we plan to do during a club session.

We decided on “MHS Progressives.” Then we had to figure out exactly how our club would be relevant to the cause and to our school community. We decided that it should be both a chapter of a larger organization, such as the 2012 Obama campaign, and an independent-minded club that could participate in whatever other types of political organizing we wanted to pursue. But by August, we still had to think of what other kinds of things our club could accomplish. Nick suggested writing letters to politicians asking them to speak at our school. We sent a letter to Representative Nita Lowey and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand to come speak at the high school. We doubted we would get any response.

Then, amazingly, during the second week of school, I received a phone call from Nita Lowey’s office, telling us that it would be possible for the congresswoman to come if we could just decide when. I was surprised that we, who represented some high school club that was not even official yet, had managed to convince an actual legislator to come to our school. Meanwhile, Ms. Scheffler confirmed that we could create a politically one-sided club, so we filled out the necessary paperwork and approached Ms. Scudder to be our club advisor.

The beauty of starting a club at MHS is that it can become whatever you desire it to be!