The SURC Ballroom was alive with students connecting to clubs promoting themselves on April 5 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. during the Spring Involvement Fair. 

The Involvement Fair is an event hosted by Student Leadership, Involvement, & Community Engagement (SLICE), where CWU’s clubs and on campus student-led organizations set up tables and promote themselves to students. 

Amber Hoefer, the director of SLICE, said the Involvement Fair is “a way to help connect CWU students with areas of interest.” 

According to Hoefer, “The Involvement Fair is a recurring event that has been going on for a few years and has recently come back to being an in person event.” 

Hoefer reported that 45 clubs set up tables at the event, and approximately 200 students were in attendance. 

Hoefer said the reason this event is so important to her is because “Registered clubs and organizations are an excellent way for students to find community.”

Club attendance

According to Executive Assistant of the Equity and Services Council Andrea Gaeta, last year was a rough year for clubs and student-led organizations. 

“The club actually dissolved for a while in the 2020 year,” Vice President of Latinx Jiselle Hernandez said. “We had to reform in the fall quarter.” 

Club meetings last year were held digitally over Zoom, and according to Gaeta, clubs had a hard time keeping up attendance for remote club meetings. 

“Online attendance wasn’t great last year,” Equality Through Queers And Allies (EQuAL) President Jax Jackson, a senior in math, said. “It’s a space where people will come to meet other people, and that doesn’t really work in an online format.” 

Jackson said one reason that online attendance was low was due to a range of issues. 

“We tried to play some games during meetings, but it just wasn’t accessible to everyone, Jackson said.” 

“The main focus this year is to establish what clubs look like in the new normal,” Equity and Services Council Director and junior sociology major Mariah Minjarez said.  

According to Minjarez, club attendance has increased this year. 

“As we’ve come back to in-person, we have been rebuilding that community,” Minjarez said.

Minjarez said one way they have been promoting clubs as we transition back to in-person club meetings is by collaborating with Hype and ASCWU. 

Other approaches clubs have taken included utilizing their social media accounts such as Instagram and putting up posters, in addition to advertisements in Hype books. 

“We came back in fall, but a lot of our officers graduated at the end of the term,” Hernandez said. “One of the best things we’ve done is let the club die off in the winter to start fresh with six new officers in spring quarter.” 

So far, LatinX has mostly done regular meetings this year, but they did have a guest speaker: the owner of The Red Pickle restaurant, in Oct. 2021. 

Jackson said that with in-person meetings, attendance for EQuAL has increased this year. 

“We were able to host events again this year, with the Trans Day of Remembrance ceremony earlier this year, and Pride Week coming back in June,” Jackson said. “This will be the first time in two years we’ve been able to host Pride Week.”