Editorial: Increase Student Involvement

The Editorial Board

The 2017-2018 school year has already brought Holbrook students amazing opportunities. With a brand new school comes many perks – especially involving the extracurricular activities. This year, the robotics team has a state-of-the-art space to work in, with more advanced equipment that helps spark innovation. H-CAM, the school’s video production club, has been granted a pristine studio with cameras and Mac computers. Luckily, the performing arts department also has a new music room and beautiful auditorium, where they will perform their first musical in the building, The Wizard of Oz, this spring.

Despite the increase of students in the school, the number of participants in each club stays roughly the same. Active students in the school participate in the majority of clubs, with the remaining high schoolers continuing to stay behind the scenes. As the student body grows, we can’t help but notice that the number of people participating has plateaued. Newspaper has about 15 active students, the H-CAM club only 30. If you compare the list of members in each club, you’ll find that most of the names overlap.


One of the many negatives of youth being uninvolved is that the students who are participating become exceedingly overwhelmed. With so few students active in extracurriculars, the clubs are often unable to fulfill their goals.
The same students are all participating in these clubs. So where do the other students go after classes release? Why aren’t more students interested in joining clubs? Do none of the options appeal to them? Are they too busy with other activities? Do they understand the benefits of joining extracurriculars?

Participating in these clubs can help students expand their communication skills and enrich their college applications. It gives them the opportunity to improve the school’s community. How can we be more inclusive? How can we get students involved? The benefits of having this new facility fall short if the students aren’t taking advantage of it. We can replace the building, but we can’t replace the people inside of it. The culture of our school needs to change, and getting people involved is the first step.