With new Covid restrictions allowing us to come back to in-person school, this also means the reappearance of our school clubs! With covid restrictions becoming more lenient , some clubs have resumed in-person meetings. Along with the return of veteran clubs, new clubs have also started emerging amidst the pandemic. How have these clubs been affected by covid, and how do they deal with restrictions and safety guidelines?

We interviewed a few members and officers of some of our more recently formed clubs to see how they are handling club responsibilities, and the challenges that covid brings. Through this interview, we get to take a look at what some of the new clubs Niskayuna High School have to offer!

The following is an interview with sophomore Jesse Angrist, a Linguistics Club founder:

James: To start off, could you briefly summarize what the Linguistics Club is about?

Jesse: It’s a club centered on the NACLO competition, which does recreational linguistics problems and develops pattern finding and problem solving skills. We learn linguistic concepts and have snacks as well!

James: How has COVID affected the club?

Jesse: I’ve never been in a club outside of COVID - COVID has made certain aspects more difficult, with club creation especially - it slows communication with the administration down, for example to Mr. Malizia, who we had to send a lot of emails to, and other than that there’s a lot of small measures we have to take at meetings, for example it’s harder to have snacks at meetings, but everyone’s fine with wearing a mask, so it’s really more intangible things like slower communication.

James: Did you consider virtual meetings? Is there a reason you decided to choose to have physical meetings instead?

Jesse: We had virtual meetings for Creative Writing Club, and no shade, but in-person meetings were just so much better - we found out that to have in-person meetings, we had to have meetings in the morning since so many people are doing sports and other stuff in the afternoon. On one hand, you could try to get around that by doing online meetings, but there’s two problems - it doesn’t really help, because you don’t want to do a online meeting before school, it feels silly - you’ve got people doing other sports and clubs anyway, so it’s just not great in general - and the second thing is you have to manage your mic, and the inherent tension of turning your camera on and off - it’s just bad, and it doesn’t work. So in conclusion, I considered online meetings very briefly, and summarily discounted them.

James: What would you change if COVID wasn’t a thing?

Jesse: I think the most direct effect if COVID wasn’t there - normally there wasn’t those all faculty meetings Tuesdays and Wednesday meetings, so the main difference is that we would probably be every week (instead of every other week), but that’s not too big - we might have slightly more time, if the bus infrastructure hadn’t semi-collapsed, but that’s mostly speculation. I don’t think COVID actually affected our club too majorly.

James: What would you change about COVID restrictions to help the club run better?

Jesse: Really, if we wanted the club to run better, it’s for us, the founders, to get more experience running and advertising for a club. It’s not the COVID restrictions that are impeding our success, and I consider it personally a major success, we had 20 people or so people at our first meeting, so COVID or not, that’s as much as I could have hoped for.

The following is an interview with sophomore Daniel Kwon, Ultimate Frisbee club member:

James: If you wanted to appeal to a potential new member what would you say to them about what the Frisbee club does?

Dan: So, Ultimate Frisbee is a sport that has two teams competing, each consisting of seven players trying to score as many points as possible. Usually when you play it’s kinda a mix between soccer, basketball, and football, and we're constantly switching between offense and defense. You're using one disk - running and trying to score a touchdown, like in football.

James: In terms of actually scheduling, and in terms of people that actually show up, what is the club like?

Dan: We have a google classroom poll every week, to see who’s coming and who's not. Before we get on the field, we have to fill out a COVID safety form, and if we have symptoms, we can’t go.

James: How has Covid been affecting the club? Perhaps through scheduling, or some rules that need to be followed?

Dan: During the game, the person guarding the person with the frisbee would be what we called the marker, and in non-covid years they would need to be one disk-length away, but due to covid they need to be an arms length away. And people on the sidelines usually keep their masks on.

James: How did you guys get a teacher to advise it, and how were you able to get space on the fields?

Dan: Mrs. Lee was actually a college-level ultimate frisbee player for Duke, so she advertised to her classes and through word of mouth and other sporting communities.

James: Talk about the sporting communities specifically, because I know personally I've been talked to by people from soccer, swimming - how did that happen?

Dan: During the late summer, some of the swimmers started talking about it and then we kinda invaded the soccer space, and then those people spread it into other niche clubs.

James: Back to the Covid theme, if Covid wasn't around, what would you change about the club and how it runs?

Dan: I would definitely want more consistent meetings, and the school is definitely concerned with COVID when dealing out field space, but ultimate frisbee is outside, so we’ve been pretty fortunate. Right now we don’t wear masks when playing on the field, with current guidelines we don’t actually need to wear them outside, but people can wear them if they want.

Nashlie: Start off with a description of the club and what it’s about.

Senior Amira Salem, Historian: We’re a club that helps girls and gender-queer people combat the gender gap in the STEM education and workforce. We do this by exposing our club members to various STEM fields, inviting guest speakers to provide insight, and exposing younger children to STEM. Although we are a club that’s centered around women in STEM, we welcome everyone! In order to close this gap, a collaborative effort by everyone must be done.

Nashlie: You mentioned your club started meeting in January, how did you eventually get the club started, especially in the midst of the pandemic?

Senior Ryana Sarcar, Founder and President: Since we couldn’t apply to be an official club at the time we heavily advertised WiSTEM on Instagram to tell people that we were starting the club. With a lot of collaboration among club officers we were able to put together presentations and discussions topics for our bi-weekly Google Meets.

Nashlie: How has Covid affected your club and how it runs?

Junior, Anina Ghosal, Treasurer: WiSTEM was started in the middle of the school year last year, which meant that we were going to be all virtual. Getting a club started virtually wasn’t ideal because it’s always nice to be able to have that face to face interaction but we really worked our way around it and got to experiment a lot with what we could and couldn’t do virtually.

Nashlie: What are the different challenges you had to face due to quarantine? What do you think you could’ve done differently if covid weren’t around?

Senior Samantha Cerezo, Vice President: With STEM, there are a lot of demos you can do - just think of all the labs in class! With COVID, we didn’t get to do much of those, and honestly, demos are one of, if not THE coolest things in STEM. Our goal is to foster girls’ interest in STEM, and by not being able to do demos, it was hard to create that excitement.

We could’ve done more field trips and done more hands-on activities. Even virtually, it was a tight-knit community, even if we all didn’t know each other very well (I confess that I didn’t know many people). I was saddened by all-virtual meetings because so much more collaboration and growth could’ve occurred face to face, which is exactly what’s needed by women in STEM: a community that respects and wants the best for them.

Nashlie: What options did you consider for communicating about the club?

Sophomore Eujeong Choi, Secretary: In addition to our weekly meets, we made an Instagram page to keep our members and non-members alike updated and informed of important women in STEM, statistics of women in the STEM workplace, etc. Despite our limited interactions with club members, we made the most out of the hour we had together every other week, talking about personal experiences, opinions, and/or sometimes just sharing fun facts.