In the coming school year, Student Alliance and Pep Club will be merging to create one club called Student Council.
The new club has been in the works for months, was finalized on Monday, May 20.

When the merge was first announced, members of both clubs reacted with surprise and some confusion, but have since changed their views on the idea.

Junior Max Rosen, the current President Elect, described his initial reaction, saying, “I was excited. All of us in both clubs were surprised, but as we got over that we realized that this is an opportunity to work more together, and I think it’s a great opportunity to expand our function as a group and expand our ideas and the projects we want to work on.”

Junior Anna Culbertson, Vice-president and acting president of Pep Club had a similar reaction.

“It’s hard to picture not having what we had this year, but as we’ve had to accept this, I think it’s cool that we get to create a new club together.”

While this may seem like an unlikely combination of clubs, Culbertson described how they often overlap.

“They are having a merger between Student Alliance and Pep Club because we have a lot of similarities in what we do,” said Culbertson.

Junior Cat Cohen, a committee chair, added, “I often hear people saying ‘what does Pep Club do? What does Student Alliance do?’ and I think having more people and getting more feedback will have more people interested in the club and involved.”

The merge was a complicated process, and the two clubs worked collaboratively to work out the plan for how it will be set up next year.

Rosen, who was one of the students heavily involved in the process, said, “The merge was not an easy task “There’s been a lot of stuff that we’ve had to layout. For example, how will the room be handled, and the name, which was an ongoing debate for a while. How does the leadership structure work out?”

Those issues were eventually resolved, with the new club agreeing on the name Student Council, as well as the creation of a new officer position called School Culture Commissioner, which will be filled by Culbertson.

With the resolution of some of their initial worries, club members are looking forward to the opportunities that Student Council will present.

Culbertson noted the increased accessibility that the club will provide.

“I think it opens up a lot of opportunities for students with broad interests, and it opens up an opportunity for students to find something in the club that they truly want to do, and will in turn make the club bigger and positively benefit the school.”

Pep club sponsor Stacy Kolack agreed.

“As sponsors, we believe that this new, expanded platform will offer the students greater opportunities to expand their work and increase their positive impact on the school community.”

Members of the clubs are optimistic about how this will affect students. Rosen said, “What I have to say to the students is that this is going to be a positive for them, and they will see the benefits next year. Our capability to work on projects is going to increase dramatically.”

He said that because there will be more members, the club can work more towards being transparent with the student body.

“Now that we have more people, it will only help us hear the students more. There’s really only positives for students in the merger.”

Culbertson added, saying that next year, this club has the opportunity to do a lot more than our clubs can do separately.

“Together, we have a really good impact. We need to focus on every aspect of all things each club did is represented. We can’t leave anything out, we can’t leave anything that was less noteworthy around the school, because that hinders the capabilities of the club.”

Despite the challenges faced during the merger of the clubs and the unexpected change, members and sponsors are looking forward to the new opportunities in the coming year.

“This is an incredibly dedicated and passionate group of students and we are excited to see what the new year will bring,” said Kolack.