On Friday, January 30th while outside the weather was made up for a generally dreary day, the colloquium on the 15th floor was a burst with the lively energy of this semester’s Club Fest. There, a number of NYU Shanghai’s student-run clubs were offering candy and smiles as they tried to recruit new members. Now I know not all of us were able to make it to Club Fest. Maybe you we’re too tired or had too much homework. Maybe you didn’t recognize what an amazing opportunity it is to join a club on campus. Or maybe you just hadn’t heard about the 11 amazing NEW clubs this semester that are just hungry for members. Whatever the case, OCA has got you covered, not just with information about these clubs, but also what the process of starting your own club is actually like. As mentioned before, there are 11 new clubs at NYU Shanghai this semester, which (in no particular order) are: Esports Club, Dueling Dribblers,LOOP, Rotaract at NYU Shanghai, Table Tennis at NYU Shanghai, Quarkey, 24 Frames, Fashion Business Association, Animal Rights and Herbivores Society, Wizards in NYUSH, and Psyche. While some of their names are self-explanatory (Table Tennis at NYU Shanghai, Fashion Business Association, Animal Rights and Herbivores Society) and others give you a bit of a hint with the name (Dueling Dribblers is a basketball club, Psyche is the Psychology Club), some of these new clubs may need a bit more elaboration.

Esports Club Don’t just think of Esports as just a video game club. It is a community based on forging bonds by taking part in electronic games. Wizard, one of the club’s co-founders, makes a strong argument for the benefit of esports, “Everyone wants to be the hero, but in esports there has to be some sacrifice. You cannot just depend on the power of the individual. Everything we do is for the ultimate victory of the whole team.” He thinks that using esports to build a community can benefit everyone in a fun, team centered way. “We hope to help everyone better understand esports and how it is different from ordinary video games,” explains Wizard. League of Legends, Dota and Hearth Stone will be the central games of the club. And they already have the a plan for their first event in the works. Esports will host a screening of Free to Play, a documentary about the famous esports game Dota. Meetings will begin after spring festival break. The first general meeting will be mainly about electing club officials, but after that the club will hold regular weekly meetings for members, as well as events where anyone can join. They will also be posting notifications about upcoming events on social media sites such as Facebook and WeChat, so look out for those. And look for their OrgSync page if you are interested in being a member.

Rotaract at NYU Shanghai Rotaract is the youth version of Rotary International for groups of people aged 18 to 30. Just in case you’re not sure what Rotary International is, it is an international service organization focused mostly on community service, however they also deal with youth development, youth leadership, business management, youth scholarship, postgraduate fellowships and youth/international exchange programs for post grads and undergrads. The organization is also involved in work towards the eradication of polio. Rotaract at NYU Shanghai is sponsored by the Rotaract of Shanghai Expatriates and will mostly be involved in community service. They have already started working towards establishing a relationship with Shanghai Helping Home and intend to visit regularly. They will also be participating and helping out with a 5k race organized by the Rotaract of Shanghai Expatriates in April. The clubs goals for this semester? Get firmly rooted at the school, gather a decent group of members, and give back to the community, while simultaneously exposing themselves to a different side of the city, a side we perhaps do not acknowledge as often as we should. The club is still in the early stages of development and while they have yet to decide on an official meeting time, club co-founder AnneLi Meisel assures that Rotary NYU Shanghai is always looking for new members. The club will function on a ‘come as you like’ basis, so there will be plenty of opportunities to get involved. If you’re interested reach out to any of the co-founders—Lily Korinek, Hunter Jarvis and AnneLi Meisel, or watch out for their upcoming OrgSync page.

Quarkey Quarkey is the club where science meets IMA. The founders are mostly STEM students who created the club to have more fun with science and escape the mundanity of studying. It is oriented towards science, tech and art (although it’s been more science and tech thus far). Last semester, the club operated on an unofficial level, so this semester they plan to do again some of the activities they did like making soft circuits, as well as trying some new things such as visiting exhibitions (they visited the robotic art exhibition and data tattoo exhibition on Sunday), trying out brain computer interfacing in March, and doing some bacteria painting if possible later in the year. They also plan to participate in iGEM, which stands for International Genetic Engineering Machine. Ann Yang emailed me a bit of information about it, “it is a synthetic biology competition, where teams use or create standardized parts to build biological systems and operate them in living cells, usually bacteria. At NYU Shanghai, we currently have small group of students working to build a team in our school, and we are doing so as a part of the Quarkey club. The team is a small, motivated, and curious group of students looking to delve into the science of genetic engineering and explore its potential applications in art, technology, and/or business.” So if you’re interested in science and want to play with cool things Quarkey might just be the place for you. It’s also a great way for anyone to destress, as it does not involve very deep knowledge of science; it is more play oriented. If you do have an interest in the club you can contact [email protected]. 24 Frames 24 frames is a filmmaking club. The three founders Pearl Basinski, Portia Liu and Nancy Li did film related activities in high school. They founded 24 frames because they wanted to continue doing so in college and help facilitate other people who are interested in the production and creation of films. In addition to crafting short films together, which will allow members to get to know each other as well as explore the city, they also intend to hold workshops to introduce skills related to the field. If you are interested, but have zero experience, that’s fine. All you need is to be interested in filmmaking. And as Pearl said, “it is a lot more than just being behind a camera.” They haven’t decided on a meeting time yet (although it will likely be Thursday), but if you’re interested contact either Pearl Basinksi [email protected], Portia Liu [email protected], or Nancy Li [email protected] .

Wizards at NYU Shanghai This magical club is dedicated to bringing a little bit more mystic and wonder to the campus. Wizards of NYU Shanghai will meet once each week to learn and practice various magic tricks. Props will be provided by the club, so no worries if you’re short a deck of cards or a rabbit in a hat. The club will also have magic video screenings and they even hope to invite a real magician to the school sometime around the end of this semester. When I spoke with one of the founding members, Jennifer Huang, she said the motivation behind this club was that she hoped to bring something she enjoyed in high school to NYU Shanghai so that others could share in it. She also hopes that the magic club will have more opportunities to try new things with the help of the resources available at NYU Shanghai. While they are still unsure which days meetings will be held, you can keep up to date on the club through Orgsync.

Lastly, here’s a bit of information I got from Richard Zhao, the guy who runs the Clubs Committee, about the New Club Development Program for those of you whose lust for club activities is still not satisfied by the addition of these 11 new clubs: NYU Shanghai runs its New Club Development Program once a year. This is a mandatory process that anyone who wishes to start a new club must go through. The first step in this process is attending a mandatory info session led by the Clubs Committee and Office Student Life. After this meeting, all potential clubs need to have a group of 4 to 5 co-founders to continue. In the spirit of NYU Shanghai’s mission to promote cross-cultural interactions, this group of co founders has to meet a nationality requirement as no group can have more than two people of the same nationality. Any club that was able to accomplish this is then reviewed by the Clubs Committee. Clubs that are approved are then assigned advisors by the Office of Student Life. Applicants must meet with these advisors to discuss their future plans and to draft their constitution. After going through all these formalities the clubs that come out on the other side, officially recognized by NYU Shanghai, begin the never-ending search for members, like you, so if one of these clubs sounds interesting or you have some time in your week that you don’t know what to do with, become apart of our school’s wonderful club community!

This article was written by Maya Williams. Send an email to [email protected] to get in touch. Photo Credit: Nicole Chan