Photo by Bryce Owen ’17 | Students meet at Model UN during lunch. Coed clubs allow the opportunity for Brophy and Xavier students to collaborate and socialize.
By Collin McShane ’19
THE ROUNDUP
Extra curricular activities are the heart and soul of Brophy for many people, and Xavier students should have the opportunity to join them if they want to.
The culture here allows for so much innovation and experimentation with art and science that almost any idea someone has, can be made into a club.
Brophy currently has about 90 functional clubs and Xavier has about 70, but only about four out 10 of Brophy club presidents I talked to said that their clubs are available to Xavier students, and the same goes for the Xaivier Clubs.
If someone wants to be in a club, they should be able to regardless of the school they attend.
As it turns out though, a lack of coed clubs seems to be because of a lack of interest rather than institutional policies.
A good example of a successful co-ed club is theater, where both sides benefit from this cross over. This is something both schools should strive for, mutual benefits for clubs.
Although I understand that there are some clubs that simply cannot be this way, they should strive for the goal of being mutually beneficial for both sides.
The concept of a club is to be a meeting place for a group of people interested in an activity, but how can you reach this goal without having the opportunity to even join.
One of the biggest problems with the lack of co-ed clubs, is lack of information. Excluding the big clubs, many Xavier and Brophy students don’t know about the other schools clubs.
So to get more information on this topic I emailed Director of Student Activities Mr. Tony Oldani from Brophy, and Director of Student Activities Mrs. Carol Hodus from Xavier.
They both sent me a list of all of the current available clubs and presidents that their corresponding schools offer.
I picked 10 clubs at random from each side and emailed their president and asked the simple question of whether or not their club was available to the other school.
I ended up 24 emails to different club presidents due to some people not responding.
For those who did respond, like I said earlier, only four out of ten groups said yes.
In a later interview, Mr. Oldani said “seven out of twelve clubs are approved”.
He continued to say that “Brophy almost never disapproves of clubs being co-ed.”
So then why aren’t more clubs co-ed?
In most cases, it’s because of the lack of student outcry in those clubs.
With a total of 29 different emails to several people, I was able to learn more about Xavier clubs than I had in a year and a half going to Brophy.
So while equal opportunists in all clubs is what we should strive for, maybe students should be more active and seek out these co-ed clubs.
I think this would be the push most Brophy students need to have a larger demand for co-ed clubs.
