How's Your Hyper-Specific Club Going?

At any given moment, Lawrentians are busy igniting passion projects, starting clubs, and launching new programs to make a difference—or so it seems. Yet, the very school clubs which grace the covers of The Lawrence and the admissions website fall into obscurity as quickly as they rise and the motives behind these projects seem less altruistic than we’d like to assume. 

These clubs performatively enact social change but lack genuine dedication or follow-through. Founded to fill a resume gap and disappear the same year the founder graduates, they rarely survive past their first major event. Despite club founders’ noble intentions, when the passion they feel is only surface-level, the sustainability of their idea fades, and so does the impact. The pressure to compile a “competitive” college application distorts the reasons for starting projects in the first place—many prioritize  “achievements” over authenticity. Loudly piloting our initiatives, we cheapen the very idea of community service. While Lawrenceville has democratized community involvement, our club culture has commodified our relationships to social causes, or even our community at large.

Commitment, consistency, and impact, rather than performance and optics, anchor real change. Meaningful projects arise from noticing a genuine need within a community or seeing an opportunity to make a long-lasting difference. Intrinsic motivation keeps the club alive as  they grow and develop long after the founders move on—truly successful clubs or nonprofits, even without fanfare, manage to create sustainable models of leadership that allow them to endure year after year. The first step towards distinguishing the difference between performative service and true impact might be to ask a few questions: Does this initiative solve a problem or fulfill a need that I, personally, am passionate about? Will I help this work to continue even after I leave Lawrenceville?

Meaningful work isn’t necessarily grandiose or attention-grabbing. In fact, quite the opposite. Small actions—like tutoring students or helping teachers manage materials— create the tender connections that foster long-lasting impacts without the weight of a “founder” title. Small but committed actions often bring real change. Sustainability in service can also mean quietly working within and tweaking existing frameworks rather than constantly and futilly creating new ones. Do we really need various technology or civics clubs when they could potentially function as parts of the same merged group? Perhaps we ought to cherish the subtle, even invisible work, done to change social norms or other undercurrents of society. Yet, when we are blinded by college stats and our own individual interests, we lose sight of what enacting good change actually means to us.

True impact isn’t measured by titles or recognition but by the enduring difference we make in our communities. So what kind of legacy do we wish to leave behind?