Milton’s club landscape is overcrowded, with 106 options of clubs to sign up for on ClubHub, around 700 students in the Upper School, and only three Club Blocks. Such a landscape makes meaningful student engagement difficult. At the center of this issue is the prevalence of “ghost clubs”—organizations that never meet but remain officially registered, with club heads and club members having been registered as well. Furthermore, genuinely active clubs are forced to compete against affinity groups during the same scheduling blocks for attendance. This conflict puts many students in a difficult position of choosing between exploring a new interest or connecting with a part of their identity.
Ghost clubs are a significant problem at Milton. They fail to hold meetings or to engage with our community, essentially existing on ClubHub in name only. Instead of contributing to campus life, these mostly inactive organizations are frequently maintained by students who may be looking for easy “resume builders” to boost their college applications. This dynamic allows some student “leaders” to take advantage of the system by claiming credit for clubs that may not be functioning in any meaningful way. Also, the continuation of listing these dormant clubs inflates the total number of clubs on campus. This distracts from and dilutes the focus on the active and established organizations that meet regularly and put effort into providing value for their membership and for the overall student body.
Director of Student Actvities Kelly Reiser defined a “ghost club” as an organization that is officially registered as a club but does not actually hold meetings or engage with the school community, noting that there are “a lot” of them on campus. Solomon Fleiss ’28, co-head of a newly approved club called Across the Aisle, feels that some students “fully abuse the system just to put a club on their college application.” He noted that some clubs don’t meet for months at a time.
Unfortunately, the ghost club problem is compounded by a lack of administrative tracking and accountability. Historically, it has been very difficult for the school to track things like attendance, transitions in club leadership, and club accomplishments from year to year. To solve this problem, Milton introduced the ClubHub app to force student leaders to log their meetings and take attendance, intending to limit the number of “ghost clubs.” Reiser, however, stated that there was a glitch in the system that prevented the administration from receiving attendance data; in other words, some clubs covertly stopped meetings as early as September without the school knowing. To date, the school still does not know how many clubs are actually “spectral.”
To further combat the prevalence of “ghost clubs” on campus, the administration introduced a new club renewal form. This form is a questionnaire given to current club heads that requires them to detail what their club accomplished during the year, what their goals for the following year are, and who the next co-heads will be.
According to Reiser, the primary goal of the form is to easily track transitions in club leadership, as in the past, these transitions were very difficult to capture when graduating seniors selected new leaders for the next year of the club. The form also provides clubs with a designated opportunity to outline any structural changes they would like to make. Once completed, the form is submitted to Reiser via ClubHub. I believe that a way for clubs to be re-evaluated every year is one solution to making all of Milton’s clubs benefit our community every year.
Also, after scrolling through ClubHub, I found that many of the club options there are actually just affinity groups or spaces that only apply to people with certain identities. I believe that Milton should build a separate block into its schedule specifically for affinity groups. Making this separation would reduce the number of people that feel they need to choose between their interests and their preferred affinity space. However, I do see how there could be problems with building specific affinity time, because not every student in the community feels like they connect with one or more affinity spaces. To solve this new problem, more affinity groups could be created or people who don’t connect with any affinity space could spend time learning about the other cultures in our incredible Milton community.
Finally, Milton should have clubs that reflect current student interests. I often see too many people just sitting in the Stu during club blocks; I believe that this phenomenon could originate from either lack of interest or lack of motivation to go to clubs, which are entirely different problems that could illustrate something negative about Milton’s student body. How does Milton have so many clubs if a large number of people don't go to them?
Implementing changes like the club renewal form and specific affinity group time would significantly revitalize campus life. Ultimately, clearing the clutter of resume-building clubs and giving affinity spaces their own dedicated time would allow Milton’s extracurriculars to serve their true purpose: genuine student connection and community engagement.