Several months ago, I wrote an article titled “Sacrificing Quality for Quantity,” which argues for the centralization of all STEM clubs. After extensive reflection, I realized that many of its suggestions and arguments are simply unrealistic or misguided. Keeping STEM clubs separate and specialized is the best way for students to cultivate their passions and grow their knowledge in specific fields.
STEM is a broad field. There is no feasible way for club leadership to give each subject an equal amount of time and exposure.
The solution offered by the article is to have frequent meetings, rotating between subjects and having specialized officers lead them. However, this is no different from having separate clubs host separate meetings, as there is little relation between the meetings.
In fact, the combined club would not be able to cover two topics on the same day, potentially doing worse than individual clubs by not giving certain subjects enough time.
I originally argued that a consolidated club with centralized leadership would create a larger member base for greater attendance and exposure. However, members would only go to meetings they are interested in, inhibiting the club’s effectiveness.
Many members like myself only care about a couple STEM subjects and would not attend each and every club meeting. Depending on the meeting topic, each meeting would only attract a small fraction of the overall member base. Additionally, although the club would have greater exposure, it would only confuse new students, as every subject is amalgamated into one club.
A major benefit of keeping STEM clubs separate is it allows the clubs more freedom. A centralized STEM club only produces more hurdles and filters for club activities. By making it harder to allocate club funds to specific subjects, the STEM club environment suffers.
The primary concern of the original article was regarding club membership, as I provided personal experience to the issue. However, the argument is incredibly pedantic. Though this issue may be true for some clubs, many others thrive and boast healthy member numbers. There is nothing wrong with the way STEM clubs are currently run, and therefore nothing needs to be changed.
Consolidating every STEM club would not be helpful. It brings no benefits and clubs that are already dying would not have their meeting attendance increased, so they essentially die off anyway. The only real remedy for smaller clubs is more exposure. These clubs need to be advertised and encouraged to entice new members.
Although in the past, I believed consolidating STEM clubs would help with membership issues clubs face and improve the student experience, I realized these assumptions were not true. The issues at hand are more nuanced, and consolidation will not change people’s minds to attend meetings that do not interest them. STEM is a broad topic, and centralizing it into one club makes club logistics complex and inefficient.
