As our campus population grows, so too does the number of clubs! This year, the number of clubs participating in Club Day grew from 88 to 96. In the hustle and bustle of Club Day, trying to locate the clubs you plan to join, it can be difficult to learn more about new clubs, so here are three mini-features on Asian Rap Club, Biology Club and ShePolitics Club.

Asian Rap Club was founded by Tata L. ’27 and Hanson S. ’27 as an homage to Tata’s Chicago roommate, who also founded an Asian Rap club. In that club, his roommate hung out with his friends, played video games and listened to rap. Initially, Tata intended to create a rap club for our school, due to Hanson’s interest in the Chinese rap industry, but inspired by Tata’s roommate, they narrowed the club’s reach down to Asian rap. In this club, they hope to spread Asian rap culture and feature an Asian rap battle in this spring’s variety show. Tata advocated for rap, saying: “Rap is the genre and music where there is no limit to what you can do.” To interested students, Hanson invites new members to “explore new aspects of [rap] culture.”

Biology Club was founded by Naoto H. ’28 to share his love of biology. Last year, when he began Biology class, he originally did not like the class. However, as he learned more and more, his appreciation for biology grew so much that he actually enjoyed taking the final exam. This club covers a variety of biology-related topics. There are fun activities planned, such as natural selection simulations, a DNA replication role-playing game and trivia, but also more academically rigorous activities, such as participation in USA Biology Olympiad and possibly Environthon. Environthon describes itself as a “high school environmental education competition” with more than 25,000 students from the United States, Canada, China and Singapore participating. Despite this large reach, Naoto is partnering with the National Envirothon organization to host the first Environthon in Hawai‘i. To interested students, Naoto said, “You might think that this is a nerdy club, but we actually have a lot of fun. We’re gonna be doing biology games, which is awesome. And if you think Biology Club isn’t good for college, it actually is because we do competitions that could go to Nationals, Envirothon, USA Biology Olympiad, science fair and more. And also, since we meet every two to three weeks, it’s not really a lot of commitment.”

ShePolitics was founded by Amy Z. ’26 with the aim of empowering women. She explained, “There aren’t a lot of women that we see in elected government positions. And growing up, that was kind of discouraging to think that while I want to become a leader, there weren’t many people that looked like me.” In this club, she hopes to interview and document the stories of different congresswomen, hold campus-wide forums about international topics, invite guest speakers to discuss global issues affecting women and educate and involve students in the legislative process by having students testify to issues that they care about. In addition, they will be hosting a panel at the Climate Future Forum on November 1. They also have a website. To interested students, Amy said, “Practically, you can gain hands-on experience at the legislature and all of that, but also there’s a sense of community as women trying to make a change in the government. … And I think having that community around advocacy is really important because it can be hard to make change in a government that’s a little bit depressing.”

The variety of ‘Iolani clubs is truly staggering. As wonderful as it is to see these clubs as seedlings, it will certainly be astounding to see how they grow and develop in the coming years.