For most of SIS clubs’ history, April has been the season of both trepidation and excitement as clubs selected executives for the next school year. But for some clubs now, this is not the case. Starting from the spring semester of the 2025-’26 school year, many clubs have chosen to pick their executives in January.
Although some clubs and organizations at SIS, such as HSSC and Coding Club, already had January selections as the default, this is the first year January selections became consolidated as an alternative choice to the traditional April selection process.
January executive selections entail drastic changes to how clubs operate. Rather than the whole club starting under a new leadership team at the beginning of the school year in August, clubs with January selection will have the new executives run the club starting from the second semester. When the new school year arrives in August, clubs would not have a new “start,” but would just resume activities that were pursued in the previous year.
“I am president of Blue Note, which hosts executive selections during January,” Jiwu Lee (11), junior executive, said. “I’m pretty sure other members appreciate it too. It is better for them, because it provides them an opportunity, since they joined a club earlier in the semester, to have an opportunity to become a part of the executive team much faster.”
The reasons behind this decision seem to be a culmination of various factors. For instance, current executives have more time to pass on institutional knowledge about the club to new executives than when selection occurs in late April, which is often a busy period for students due to looming AP tests and club renewals. Since top executives are often seniors who will be graduating soon, having January selections gives them the opportunity to make sure clubs are settled before they leave.
“I implemented [the January executive selections] first with HSSC,” Nathan Warkentin, former HSSC advisor, said. “The whole point was that seniors were checking out and doing nothing and becoming an emotional dead weight on the rest of the organization. The result was a much more active and engaged club second semester.”
Another reason behind this implementation is also the lack of senior participation during the second semester. As many seniors have submitted college applications by the start of the second semester and some have already been admitted, they often have other things to prioritize than club work.
“In the second semester of their senior year, seniors’ priorities are naturally going to start to shift—and they should,” Chris Del Vecchio, HS vice principal, said. “By the time it gets to April and May, seniors should be ready to leave high school. If they’re not ready to leave high school, that’s a problem. But while that shift does occur, ideally, they should still be positively impacting the community that they are still living in.”
With the system more widespread, it is expected that there would be more junior and sophomore top executives. However, early executive selections might cause juniors to leave the clubs, since they believe that they have no prospect of becoming an executive in the future.
“I think [juniors leaving the club] is not really a problem,” Jiwu said. “That’s the same if you do it in December, just the difference between if they’re there for a semester. If they are not dedicated enough to stay in a club just because they don’t get an executive position, they probably weren’t contributing that much in the first place.”
