Student clubs have been a cornerstone and a touchpoint for school and universities for generations but the NECC community seem to be lacking in that department as of late.

Clubs and organizations are hard to contact, emails go unanswered and the school calendar is still not updated for the new semester which is now coming to a close.

NECC has constantly pushed for students to get involved with the school community and join clubs but the clubs do not seem to have as many participants as years prior.

The Tabletop Game club has experienced a decline in members, the environmental club is not running at the moment, and other clubs do not seem to be interested in interviews with student journalists.

This all leads to the important question of where has the school spirit gone?

This could be a multitude of things leading to a decline in clubs: students are busy with their own lives outside of class many of which include jobs and families but that did not stop the clubs thriving before so why now?

Clubs at Northern Essex Community College seem to be slowly fading away with the club and organizations page on the school website lacking updates for the current Spring 2024 semester.

When clubs have been contacted by this reporter, there have been few replies about the state of student clubs.

A majority of the clubs continue to say the schedule for the Fall 2023 semester, with the few exceptions being fairly hard to get in touch with. When contacting the student life email about this topic no reply was made.

“The Environmental Club, it has been defunct for the past year and a half due to a lack of student involvement. If there is interest in the Fall, I am happy to reconvene the club” says Mark Reinhold the Advisor of the Environmental club.

The website however still does have a schedule posted saying that the club is meeting for the Fall of 2023, just one example of clubs at NECC which have been seeing a lack of student involvement.

When attending an event for the Nursing club at the Irish Cottage few students seemed to be attending and the president of the club did not respond to any attempts to get in touch about the event.

When contacting other members and advisors of clubs around campus for information on club meetings few responses were made, or recommendations were made for other people to contact and the reporter reach out to those people and there were still no responses.

It seems as though NECC has not had as good of a turnout with events recently.  An event taking place at the Irish Cottage for the nursing club did not seem to have that great of a turnout, but not many people seemed to know about the event. NECC needs to start advertising the clubs more and making the availability more open for students to get in contact. Update the calendars and answer emails so students can feel that their voices are heard when they have a question about a club or an event.

Student clubs are important for the students to connect with each other outside of class and to have a break to not think about work, class, or other stresses they may face in their everyday life and we need to find a way to get them back to where they once were.