This school year, ASB Community Link implemented new changes to the club application process to feature a trial period for new clubs. Following the changes, CLink seven new clubs for the upcoming 2026-27 school year.
In the past, CLink conducted initial screenings of the prospective club applicants, later sending off a selected few for the ASB Legislative Council to look over. After these approvals from the Legislative Council, clubs became official. However, junior and CLink head commissioner Ojas Kothari saw a problem with this process after being part of the commission since his freshman year.
“Last year, CLink accepted one club,” Kothari said. “We felt that other potential clubs should get a better chance at becoming official.”
Working with other commissioners, they proposed a new trial period for clubs during their first year of establishment. After receiving approval, the clubs will be monitored by CLink for attendance and must maintain at least 15 members in at least six meetings in the first semester. The clubs will also be required to complete administrative tasks, and will not be officially classified as a club yet.
“This allows us to accept more new clubs,” ASB adviser Anna Kirsh said. “So, instead of saying we’re only taking the clubs that we were 100% confident in, we can take clubs that we see a lot of potential in as well and have them prove to us that they can maintain member interest.”
Another reason for this extra monitoring is that many larger, well-established clubs may struggle to find new advisers if their original adviser drops them. Advisers may not want to stack on additional responsibilities, while others are already working with smaller clubs. CLink wants to ensure that these larger clubs, which have already built up their own communities, are maintained.
“Clubs with overlapping topics may struggle with attendance,” Kothari said. “It doesn’t just hurt them, but it also hurts the other clubs that already exist.”
CLink also noticed that many new applicants had similar concepts to existing clubs, so by merging similar clubs, commissioners took steps to allow these students to find community while avoiding repetition.
“With the plethora of clubs we have on campus, we always want to create spaces where students feel like they have a community,” senior and ASB President Samay Sikri said. “We don’t want to risk students starting clubs that have a hard time getting members or can’t complete required administrative tasks.”
For the 2026-27 school year, the newly approved clubs are Pickleball Club, Chess Club, Philosophy Club and Ethics Bowl, Vietnamese Student Association, Nutrition Club and Fil-Am Club. The pre-existing Go Club and Mahjong Club merged to form Chinese Board Games Club.
