New & Niche Clubs

At Stuyvesant, clubs are an integral part of education, recreation, and the social scene. After 10th period each day, the hallways buzz with students into the early evening. Last year, Stuyvesant boasted over 300 student-run clubs, creating spaces for every student to find their niche. This article profiles six new and ambitious clubs that will contribute to Stuyvesant’s rich extracurricular culture.

Stuy Soup Society

@stuysoupsociety

A pioneering club with a resilient team, the Stuy Soup Society aims to connect people through soup. The founders of the club bonded over soup themselves and hope to bring the exploration of soup, food, and culture to the Stuyvesant community. “Anyone remotely interested in soup can join,” junior and co-president Konstantine Konstantopoulos said. “Home cooks who want to give us recipes, or students learning economics [who] want to learn about the soup industry, [or] people interested in volunteering.”

During their meetings, leaders will serve different soups and members will have the opportunity to bring their own. The leaders recognize the inconvenience of carrying tubs of soup around on public transportation and have come up with a potential solution. “We will probably do food delivery services,” junior and co-president Eric Gao said. The club also plans to accommodate stress during testing weeks. “We want to completely chill and study, but we will bring soup to enjoy at these meetings so it relates to the mission of soup,” Gao explained.

Outside of enjoying soup in meetings, the club also plans to have a wider community impact. “One of our main goals is to organize a service event at a local soup kitchen or community center, like a church,” Gao elaborated. Plans to contact churches have already been made, and the goal is to get each member to between 50 to 100 community service hours. The club leaders plan on posting announcements about service hours and fundraising on Notion, an organizational platform.

The club is keen on communication. Regarding the logistics of the club, Stuy Soup Society has set up Google Forms to collect questions, suggestions, and registration for optional tasks for members who wish to be more involved. “We try to be very flexible with our schedule and communication,” junior and co-president Nathalie Cuevas revealed. 

Stuy Soup Society plans to try new recipes and embrace their members’ ideas. As diverse soup lovers themselves, the leaders highlighted the significance of soup and culture. “We’re going to have a lot of cultural elements,” Cuevas said. “All of us are from different ethnic backgrounds, so we’re all going to bring something new to the table.”

Stuy Rocketry Club

@stuy_rocketry

The experimentative Stuy Rocketry Club, which used to run during remote learning (a period that greatly hindered them from building and launching rockets), has returned stronger than ever. “The club is dedicated to designing, building, and launching rockets using the main principles of engineering design,” senior and club president William Haratsch explained. “It’s that process of making something that barely works, and then you improve on it—it’s sort of magical.”

While rocketry may sound advanced, Haratsch stressed that the club is beginner-friendly and should not feel intimidating to anyone interested in joining. “Anyone [can join]; if you ever look up to the stars and see the moon, and just dream about [...] maybe one day visiting Mars or dying there, [it’s for you],” Haratsch said. For the first meeting, members will learn the basics. “We’re going to go over the sort of CAD softwares that we’re going to be using through rocketry, and also, so everyone’s on a baseline, we’re going to go over basic rocket parts,” Haratsch said. They will use online software such as OpenRocket and Fusion360 to design the rocket.

Haratsch is aware that most people interested in the club will be eager to start building. “I think if [we] only do lectures and only do lessons, it’d be kind of boring. [...] Once we get all the basic foundational stuff out of the way, we’ll get right to building,” Haratsch assured. “There are several rocket launch sites throughout the city […] occasionally, we may meet for trips outside of school to launch rockets [and to] test them.” By the end of the school year, Haratsch hopes that the club will have built three rockets. “On our third rocket, I hope that we’ll have added more complex features, like microcontrollers […] the goal is to make a more complex multi-stage rocket,” Haratsch said.

Interestingly, the Stuy Rocketry Club has a partnership with another rocketry team located in Istanbul, Turkey. “We’re going to connect with them and hopefully design a rocket together and [...] share knowledge,” Haratsch divulged. There are many other benefits to having this international connection. “Their regulations are much more relaxed [compared] to the U.S.,” Haratsch explained. “[Here], metal rockets are completely banned, but in Turkey, there are no regulations.”

Stuy Houseplants & Botany

@stuyhouseplants

A lighthearted activity that combines education and plants, Stuy Houseplants & Botany allows students to explore the joy that can be cultivated through houseplanting. House planting is a calming activity that consists of growing plants indoors. Having neglected houseplants himself, junior and president Collin Liang created Stuy Houseplants and Botany to expose students to houseplants and help them destress from the workload of school.

This club’s uniqueness lies in its hands-on approach. “I’ve seen a lot of classes that people do with taking care of plants, and it tends to just be a presentation,” Liang stated. “I feel like that’s not as informative or as fun as if you were able to take your own plant home and learn how to take care of it first hand and refer to us as a secondary resource.”

Stuy Houseplants & Botany encourages beginners even remotely interested in planting to join the club. The seeds, pots, and other materials necessary for indoor plants to thrive will be provided by the leaders. “We’re really catered towards everybody because it’s a beginner’s level where we lead a project together,” Liang said. “We each take our own plant home and report to the club as you begin to grow it, and we can grow together as a group to learn about how we take care of the cutting, [and] the procedures you need to grow it […] from first-hand experience.” Topics that will be covered range from botany to basic treatments. “We’ll go over fertilizer, [and] we can talk about different substrates like soil versus hydroponic substitutes,” Liang elaborated.

Members can also stay connected with the club leaders outside of school. If they have an urgent question about taking care of their propagation, they can simply message the Instagram account, which Liang will respond to with instructions.

The responsibilities of members include taking care of the plant they take home and updating the club about its progress. “Each person has their own propagation going on at home. Then they can update everybody [during meetings],” Liang said. Meetings will occur biweekly and discussions will be led by the experienced leaders. The team is working toward finishing a project each semester. “At the end of every semester, we’ll finish a propagation project,” Liang added. “Everybody will hopefully be able to take home their own plant.”

The Crewmates

The suspiciously awesome club for Among Us lovers has been revamped since the pandemic. Senior and president of The Crewmates Erica Liu is passionate about the murder mystery game and used to be a member of the original Among Us club in 2020. “When people ask me for a fun fact about myself, I say that I unironically like Among Us. [...] I love [it] because I get to try deducing the imposter’s identity with clues, logic, and knowing little details about the game,” Liu wrote in an e-mail interview. “I really looked forward to playing at the end of every Friday.”

Since the club allows true Among Us fans to come together in the same room, they can play deduction rounds with each other rather than with strangers in the game’s public lobby. “This club is made especially for all those Among Us fans who really want to play serious games, though we’re definitely going to experiment with different non-serious game-modes,” Liu explained. “A club leader [will give] a rundown of the game-modes we’ll be playing that day—are we playing seriously? Hide and seek? Trolling around? Just experimenting with different maps?—and the leader will create a game.” Outside of school meetings, members can still keep in touch and play with each other through The Crewmates’ Discord server.

Liu emphasized that the club is very open, suited even for people who don’t want to play or who don’t have a passion for the game yet. “Anybody who likes Among Us for the memes or for the actual game are welcome to join!” Liu encouraged. “I believe there is a sizable Stuy population of students who actually enjoy the deduction part of Among Us [...] I’d also love to see how many [people] we convert to loving Among Us and how much people improve at the game after playing with us.”

Stuyvesant Humanities Prep

@stuyhp

Stuyvesant Humanities Prep is a transformative club that plans to offer humanities tutoring services to students for courses like AP European History and Freshman Composition. Co-presidents and juniors Prajusha Azeem and Minadee Kulawansa first became friends in their freshman AP Biology class. The sense of unity that they felt from supporting each other and their classmates through such a challenging class was an environment that they wanted to replicate for other students. This, combined with inspiration from social studies teacher Mordecai Moore’s skillful teaching in their sophomore year AP European History course, sparked the idea for Stuyvesant Humanities Prep. “We recognize that the reason why we have a positive relationship to a lot of the humanities is because we had really great teachers,” Kulawansa explained. “We want students to walk away from the school year feeling motivated to take more humanities classes.”

Stuyvesant is a STEM-focused school, but Azeem and Kulawansa want to shed light onto the humanities. “A lot of people who come here recognize that there’s use to learning science, tech, engineering and math, and because of that, there’s a lot of organizations and clubs that have been made and centered around tutoring people in those subjects. But what happens if someone struggles with English or history?” Kulawansa questioned. “We wanted to create a place where students could rely on other students and connect with their teachers when they were struggling with humanities.”

Anyone that needs help with humanities courses can register for tutoring, and students well-versed in the field can apply to become tutors. “For tutees, anyone who needs help with humanities or is interested in learning more about the humanities or just wants to prepare for the AP tests would make a good fit,” Kulawansa said. “For tutors, we’re looking for someone who has great foundational skills in analyzing concepts throughout history and is genuinely passionate about humanities.”

This club plans to have group tutoring sessions and launch a sign-up spreadsheet for sessions. Stuyvesant Humanities Prep also plans to offer virtual tutoring and crash course review sessions for final exams and APs to fully immerse tutees into any humanities field.

Nutriderms 

@stuynutriderms

At its core, Nutriderms is a constructive club that focuses on the well-being of our skin using properties of nutrition. Senior and Nutriderm president Maggie Wang initiated this club due to a personal struggle with her own skin. “The reason why I started this club was because I had really bad acne. It was super bad acne in the beginning of high school, and I was searching for ways to heal my acne. Isotretinoin (Accutane) was good, but it had really large side effects,” Wang stated. Side effects of accutane include extreme swelling, rashes, and hives, so Wang chose to switch to another method of taking care of her skin. Due to her experience, Wang emphasizes the significance of incorporating natural methods, such as altering one’s diet. “Some healthy food ideas include baked salmon with beans and greek yogurt parfaits. Salmon is high in omega-3 fatty acids which are shown to reduce inflammation and increase skin hydration. Greek yogurt is also rich in probiotics which help with the body's absorption of important vitamins and minerals,” Wang explained.

Another natural alternative is replacing cow’s milk with oat milk. “After doing some research, I found that cow's milk can often aggravate acne because it has a high GI, meaning that it raises blood sugar quickly, which can actually trigger insulin release and androgen production which cause blocked pores. An alternative that I prefer is oatmilk. Additionally, I tried to incorporate more fruits into my diet, which are rich in antioxidants which protect your skin,” Wang explained. 

Skin fanatics can plan to meet at least once a month through Nutriderms and engage in a variety of meaningful activities, such as fundraising for skin cancer and hunger nonprofits, researching and designing infographics, and generating skin-healthy snack ideas. The infographics will be uploaded once a week, focusing on the different vitamins and the role they play in skin barrier function, as well as providing information about specific skin conditions and study-based recommendations.

Besides these initiatives, Nutriderms’s main goal is to be a safe haven for anyone to ask questions and receive answers about caring for their skin. It is a place where people can learn to feel comfortable in their skin and meet understanding peers. “Meetings are also a time for you to make friends and just chat about anything,” Wang added.

Experience is not necessary for a leadership role in this club, and all students are welcomed and encouraged to contribute. “I think if you’re even a little interested in skincare, nutrition, or anything like that, come check us out on Clubs and Pubs! There’s going to be leadership applications soon, and [the application] will be simple to receive,” Wang concluded.