Five seniors wept in the corner of Bliss 301, knees hugged tightly to their chests. A dozen Krispy Kreme donuts lay on the table, untouched save for a bitten strawberry-frosted donut damp with tears. The dim and barren room was occasionally illuminated by a projection of a soccer player repeatedly running into a wall. Suddenly, a wail erupted as one senior risked a glance at the whiteboard: the messily scribbled faded green ink read “Futsal Meeting Jan. 9th.” Once a heavily-attended club, the room sat empty.
“Those were the dark days,” recalls Vishnu M. ’26, former leader of Math Club. Once a sanctuary for Mathcounts Countdown and Gaussian heat mapping, attendance plummeted as the number of clubs at Lakeside grew to 120 in 2025. “Before the purge, we invited an MIT professor studying machine learning applications in differential equations. Not a single student showed up, except for two sophomores who ended up playing Brawl Stars the entire talk.”
Other clubs had also been reporting record lows for attendance. Newer clubs like Flag Club once thrived with passion. Then, the rooms they once inhabited felt like ghost towns. However, some clubs were luckier than others during the crisis — for example, Model United Nations Club reported an average of three Lakesiders attending club meetings; sometimes four during diplomatic simulations.
Henry J. ’25, formerly Lakeside Student Government (Stud Gov)’s treasurer, explains that the sheer amount of clubs overwhelmed Stud Gov’s budget and student’s time. With only five hundred dollars in Starbucks gift cards to allocate, funds quickly evaporated as various clubs requested money for competition fees, Netflix subscriptions, overpriced buzzer systems, plots of land in Scotland, and a three-hundred-pound solid bronze statue of a scarlet macaw.
At the same time, students once debating between Anime Club or the Bob Ross Organization found themselves juggling dozens of new clubs like the Geometry Club, whose leaders explained they broke off from Math Club since their goal of “spreading trigonometry around the world” didn’t align with Math Club’s objectives.
In light of the collapse of the club free market, Rohan D. ’25, Lakeside’s Student Body President, vowed to bring club ‘overpopulation’ to an end. In his midterm address in late January, Rohan declared a state of emergency and demanded “swift and unrelenting action to merge ‘fake’ clubs [and] terminate clubs meant solely for boosting college applications. Additionally, clubs must submit a list of five productive community contributions weekly.”
The following Tuesday ACT, February 4th, twenty-three unidentifiable students, all part of the newly formed Presidential Defenders Alliance (PDA), Rohan’s personal task force, donned suits and dark sunglasses. They marched into Bliss Hall and Allen Gates, then began dragging flailing club leaders out to Red Square. In Red Square, a crowd of 300 students were delivered a fiery speech by Rohan as he declared his new plan to ‘fix’ Lakeside.
“As I speak, admin is passing legislation to cut or merge 80 clubs and only keep the ‘ten most perfect clubs.’ Through a new competitive selection process, only the best will succeed,” Rohan boomed over the speakers. “By putting more time and money into Lakeside’s clubs’ hands, we are transitioning to a better future where our grandchildren can enjoy the luxury of rich and well-attended clubs.”
After the speech concluded, Red Square erupted into chaos as furious students threw everything they could get their hands on at the podium. Honors Physics notebooks, SAGE cheeseburger and macaroni soup, and copies of The Great Gatsby found their way towards the Student Body President’s head. Luckily, metal barriers around Red Square protected Mr. Dhillon, likely erected thanks to the foresight of increasing PDA presence.
One week later, just as school life was returning to normal, students were summoned to the Comp Gym where Rohan announced the newly reformed ‘Ten’: Math-Science-CS Club, Medicine & Health Club, Affinity Alliance Group Club, Environment Club, Various Fun Student Activities Club, Volunteering Club, Music Or Dance Club, Money Club, Arguments & Politics Club, and Bird Club.
Immediately, the room grew bloody as the 100 students who didn’t skip assembly charged to the gym floor to protest. They were quickly knocked out by the PDA.
“Today marks the day club history turns to a better future! Starting today, each club will receive stipends in the thousands! There will be attendance in the hundreds! No, millions!” Rohan cackled as students and faculty dropped one by one from sleeping gas.
Two months later, in the crisp March air, student life seemed oddly familiar post-crackdown. Freshmen bounded cheerfully to class. Sophomores clustered and chatted in hallways. Juniors dragged themselves to school clutching cups of coffee. Seniors were absent from campus.
Indeed, the remaining ‘Ten’ did see increased attendance and funding. Thanks to less clubs competing for the two weekly club periods (and perhaps a little to the executive order mandating club attendance), rooms filled once again with the aroma of fresh pizza, the sound of hearty laughter, and the permeating presence of the PDA in the corners enforcing the new rules.
“I used to believe the purge was a bad thing,” says Vishnu, now a proudly appointed leader of the Math-Science-CS Club. “Thanks to the changes brought by the Dhillon Administration and the PDA, we can enjoy full student participation and increased funding. Previously, in Math Club, we could only question why Throckmorton bought fifty oranges. Now we can actually buy fifty oranges and see for ourselves!”
However, not all is joyful. Deniz I. ’28, former leader of Flag Club, speaks on his struggles to fit into the new Arguments & Politics Club (A&P). “My club used to be all about vexillology and the celebration of symbolic design. However, all these A&P members seem to want to do is debate each other on the impacts of rare earth metal mining in Thailand.”
He also criticizes the loss of personality with the increasing generalization of clubs: once one-of-a-kind clubs now are “kind of mind-numbing,” he says.
“Also, the fact that the PDA is now lurking all over campus makes me question our right to free spee— mmpfhgh,” Deniz adds while two hands suddenly appear and clamp a rag over his mouth.
This article was reviewed, edited, and approved by the PDA.
