Students with a variety of interests are planning to start new clubs for the 2019-2020 school year. There will be 4 new clubs to check out, along with continuing clubs, at Club Rush which is taking place on Tuesday, September 17th. The new clubs are:
Bio Builders
VEX Robotics Club
Environmental Club
Swing Dancing Club
Bio Builders- Science teacher Steve Gade is starting a club for students who “like to party with plasmids and restriction enzymes.” Any student interested in science, biology, or biotech would find ways to expand their interests in Bio Builders. Gade gave an example of an activity the club will do this year involving the cloning of a mouse gene to produce mouse proteins. Gade said the purpose of the club is to “get together and nerd out on molecular biology.”
VEX Robotics Club- Students with even the slightest interest in robotics have a unique opportunity to join the new VEX Robotics Club, started by senior Kyle Burton. The club’s main activity is to design, build, and eventually compete with robots in a regional VEX Robotics competition. “If we do well we can progress through the competition.” Burton stated that the goal of the club is not to win, since it’s Morro Bay High School’s first year competing, but to learn more about the competition and improve for later years.
Environmental Club- Student activists will be starting the Environmental Club, advised under Environmental Science teacher Leah Heidt. Because Heidt only has one period of Environmental Science, the club was started to open the subject to more students. The club will be driven by passion to create change in the behavior of the MBHS community to better the environment. The goal of the club on campus is to promote an eco-friendly lifestyle amongst students, like composting in the cafeteria and encouraging reusable items instead of plastic.
Senior Jessa Maurer is the president of this new club. Maurer is excited to start this club and encourages anyone to join. “I am very passionate about what goes on in that class, climate change, and the environmental issues we face as a generation. We want to bring the students of Morro Bay High School together to help resolve these problems, as little of a school we are, we want to make change.” Maurer mentioned she and vice president Vienna Laughlin had discussed the club coming together with Student Union. The club would bring in and tackle real issues in the world “like the fires in the Amazon, we’d bring that in to a meeting, talk about it, analyse it, say ‘Hey, what can we do as a school, as students to make a change or make this better?’”
Swing Dancing Club- Social dancing will be brought back this year through the Swing Dancing Club. Seniors Marisa Dinsmoor and Abbie Burrus will be president and vice president of the energetic and social Swing Dancing Club. The club plans on meeting once every two weeks to learn new dance moves and dance to swing music. Burrus mentioned the group will work up to go to real social dancing events. “Every two months we’ll go to the Madonna Inn or Cal Poly and go to actual swing dances with live bands and stuff. It’ll be really fun!” Students don’t need previous dance experience to give swing dancing a try. “We want as many people as possible because it’s just such a fun thing.”
When asked why she had an interest in Swing Dancing, Burrus explained where it started. “Every year the jazz band performs with the Sugar Daddy Swing Kings who are a super good swing band. Everyone was dancing, and me and my friends watched all these awesome people swing dance and we wanted to actually get good at it. It’s an applicable skill to bust out some funky moves and socialize.” A tribute to the past, learning to swing dance can be educational as well as fun.
The new clubs bring opportunity to experience and learn new things. New and old, MBHS offers and abundance of clubs to choose from to fuel and expand student interests.
