Gilken Shuts Down Clubs

After the recent creation of several student-run “clubs,” Mr. Gilken has decided to shut down 1,000 clubs and introduce new club creation guidelines. Clubs are now required to have their leadership openings reviewed by Mr. Gilken himself and their teacher sponsor. This is to avoid clubs being made solely for the purpose of a leadership position on a resume, and ensuring that there is genuine commitment to the club. 

Moving forward, clubs are only allowed to have a president, social media manager, and treasurer (with some exceptions). Additionally, clubs also now need to write a 10,000 word, single spaced, 12 point font “business proposal” to argue for the legitimacy and school benefit of their proposed club. The third and final check for a club to remain open or to be created is ⅓ of members being from a different grade from the founder/president, in order to ensure clubs do not become cliquey or grade exclusive. 

As mentioned, some clubs were shut down from a lack of satisfying requirements.. These clubs include “Plant Club,” “School Lunch Experimentation Club,” and “West Philly Trolley Club.” So we went to a handful of these clubs to see what inspired Mr. Gilken to install these regulations. We first went to “Plant Club”—in quotes for their recent scandal of claiming credit for adding plants to the school building, which were quickly discovered to be fake plants. The club was forced to remove their statement that they were “beautifying the school with a green thumb” as they have been open for 3 years and the most recent and only action they have taken as a club were the fake plants. They were found to make little to no contribution to the school. Then we visited the School Lunch Experimentation Club—a club where members go to the lunchroom and eat food (radical, we know). There weren’t even official rooms, nor meeting days, but most shockingly they didn’t even have an Instagram to display how much fun they were having. Lastly and most saddening, West Philly Trolley Club–a club for all trolley riders to come together and go home together–shut down for similar reasons as the School Lunch Experimentation Club.

Hopefully the actions towards these clubs evoke the change Masterman needs. A rebirth of authentic clubs, a renaissance of real clubs.