Clubs are a vital aspect of the collegiate experience. No matter your interest or schedule, there is more than likely a community to become enthralled with at Augustana College. However, as the Office of Student Life announced to the student body in an email on Sept. 29, there are a shocking number of inactive clubs looking for leadership.

With nearly 30 inactive clubs, a few questions arise: What has led these clubs to become inactive, and how have the active clubs managed to stay alive?

Augustana’s club baseball team has faced a litany of issues over the past few years. Senior Johnny Orozco said that it has been a struggle to field a full team since the 2020 spring season was cancelled due to COVID-19.

In the fall of 2024, Orozco, acting as the club’s president, said he was able to strike up enough interest to field a roster for the first time in five years. Yet the struggles didn’t go away once the season started.

Whether it be scheduling conflicts, unforeseen injuries or waning interest as the season went on, Orozco said he was constantly forced to scramble and find enough players, or risk forfeiting games in an already short season.

“The biggest issue was getting people to show up,” Orozco said. “It was just tough to get consistency out of people since you can’t control if people show up or not. We’re a small school, it’s hard to recruit more guys who will consistently be there. You need nine guys who are consistent enough to show up to the games, which is why we forfeited five contests last year.”

With consistency being the crux of Orozco’s problems, it certainly didn’t bode well when the 2025 fall season was scheduled to start with fewer than the required nine members. He said there were 12 verbal commits at the start of the year, but most of the potential members dropped. After a number of recruiting attempts, Orozco said the club decided to fold after just one year back on the scene.

Not all clubs go through that same struggle, though. The pickleball club has risen from an idea to become a staple of the PepsiCo Center courts throughout the years. Thanks to its founder, senior Paige Beggs, the pickleball club is back for its third year, bringing in new members week-to-week.

While a growing sport in its own right, the pickleball club has certainly benefited from Beggs’ work in growing it, pushing anyone with an interest to attend the weekly meetings and try something new. Even with the progress Beggs has made, she said she still sees a brighter future that she and the future leaders are working towards, pushing the club and the sport as far as they can.

“I just want people to play more,” Beggs said. “People should be aware that we have the equipment, and anyone can use it. I’d love to see the next president get in contact with the Quad Cities Pickleball Club and hopefully have them come teach a class. They were at St. Ambrose [University] last semester, so I’d love to figure out how to get them here. I’ve always wanted to set up a “student vs. faculty” event. I think that things like that would be so much fun!”

The desire to push the club further could be the driving force behind its popularity, something that can also be said for UNYK Multicultural Dance Troupe.

UNYK opens its doors to anyone willing to try something new from all walks of life with no dance background required to step onto the stage. All the club asks is that you come and practice the student-produced choreography before their showcases each semester.

Through their no-audition method, UNYK has been able to foster a welcoming environment that encourages students to try something new, even if it puts them out of their comfort zone. That’s what senior Co-President Paige Rogde said is one of the biggest draws for new faces.

“I feel like we don’t have a very rigid structure of what you can and can’t do in UNYK, so that brings a lot of different crowds,” Rogde said. “Once you get people to join, they tell their friends, and that’s how you get them in the audience. Then, sometimes, we get people who watch one show in the audience and want to join. Just getting students to even come and watch us dance inspires a lot of people to try it out for themselves.”

However, Rodge said that despite having a welcoming community, it doesn’t save UNYK from having to go through the struggle of student outreach that every club has to traverse.

With the struggles club baseball has faced at Augie, one of the most difficult aspects of starting a club or keeping it alive is getting enough students to participate and do so consistently. Even through emails, club fairs on campus and word of mouth, some clubs just can’t drum up enough interest to stay afloat in the minds of busy college students.

Senior UNYK Co-President Sydney Shields said she knows how hard student outreach is and how difficult it can be to get people’s attention while competing with so many other clubs, even with the multitude of outlets club leaders have tried.

“I think tabling in The Brew is something everyone does,” Shields said. “But I also think when people see the table, they kind of avoid [the group] if they don’t know them. I think [student outreach] is difficult because you can advertise as much as you can on your Instagram or on the Office of Student Life’s Instagram, [and] you don’t know if people are necessarily looking at it.

There are many reasons that there are nearly 30 inactive clubs at Augustana, with the act of running a club sometimes seeming to be much more trouble than it’s worth. Yet, there are still a number of clubs on campus that are not only active but thriving.

With the busy lives of students only getting busier, some clubs will phase in and out of popularity, and in some unfortunate cases, existence. But for those clubs who are able to adapt, expand and become more welcoming to more students, they will continue to stay afloat, remaining a staple of the college experience. With students still able to start their own clubs, there is always potential for new communities to grow alongside the ones that remain active, which keeps the campus community growing even when some clubs face difficult seasons.