Swarms of students, from freshmen to seniors, romped around the blacktops at UHS on March 24 for the second time during the 2022-2023 school year for a club festival, this time during Clubapalooza. Students eagerly waited in line to buy tickets to purchase the food and merchandise that clubs prepared in hopes of attracting future members. While first-semester clubs were able to attend Club Kickoff in October, Clubapalooza was the first chance for newly formed second-semester clubs to publicize their club schoolwide and raise money for their club activities. Many students around campus took the chance to learn about new clubs and find new opportunities to impact the world positively.

“My favorite thing about Clubapalooza was being able to join and support new clubs,” sophomore Vanessa Fucito said. “I [only] joined the HALO Club, but I did find other clubs that interested me that I might join later.”

A prime example of what clubs do with the funds raised from Clubapalooza is the HALO Club’s donation to autism intervention therapies. The HALO club, run by sophomores Jamie Du, Chloe Tsai, Isabella Veravanich and Ella Schmidt, strives to raise awareness about autism and bring people together to help people with autism. The club is a small branch of the HALO Foundation that has the slogan Dance for Autism.

This Clubapalooza was an opportunity for the HALO Club to make up for the main fundraiser event they were unable to host. 

“Every year, there is a [HALO Foundation] fundraiser for people to dance and raise money to help people with autism, but we didn’t do it this year because we started the club too late,” Tsai said.

In addition to joining the clubs themselves, many students went to the club booths simply to buy food during lunch without going off campus. Almost all of the clubs brought food for people to buy. Food prices were higher than their usual prices at restaurants to help clubs raise money. Clubs raised a lot of money, including the History Club through their sale of Raising Cane’s. After about 10 minutes into lunch, all of the fried chicken had been sold out, and people resorted to buying fries and Cane’s sauce. 

“I loved browsing the food options around the blacktop to figure out what to eat,” Fucito said. “After careful consideration, I finally decided to buy donut holes and churros.”

Buying and eating food was exciting for all the customers walking around, but Clubapalooza was also exciting for the people running the booths. 

“Advertising and exposing the clubs to new people was fun,” Tsai said. “However, selling out all our food and having my [sophomore] friend Dhruv [Koyali] tape our poster to himself while walking around to advertise our club was the most fun.”

Although Clubapalooza was very fun for consumers and providers alike, one downside some students touched on was that it was difficult to find out where certain clubs were.

“Making a map to show students where all the clubs are located would have been helpful because it took me a while to find the HALO Club for donut holes and churros,” Fucito said.

Navigation issues aside, this year’s Clubpalooza was successful all around, bringing UHS students both joy and exposure to new communities on campus.

“Clubapalooza brought me closer to the school, and while it may not have gotten me into any clubs, being exposed to them revealed communities within the school previously unknown [to me],” sophomore  Leo Kushnir said.

Even those perusing the stalls without tickets still had something to gain from the event. 

“Clubapalooza helped broaden my overall interests at this school,”  sophomore Gianni Choi said. “Although I had no money for tickets, I still enjoyed passing by the different tables and seeing what each unique club had to offer.”

Clubapalooza is a longstanding tradition that UHS strives to continue, bringing joy to the students who attend and run the booths. UHS strives to keep this tradition going to help expand students’ interest in clubs and create an overall fun day for students.