2015 is the year of new growth at McDaniel. With a number of new organizations joining the McDaniel community, The Office of Student Engagement (OSE) prepares for what might be one of the best years for McDaniel in regards to student engagement.
Here is a brief description of what new organization McDaniel has to offer!
The Fourth Estate Club
Established by sophomores Jessica Preactor, President, and Daniel Leong, Vice-President, last spring, the main goal of this organization is to increase awareness of social injustice in the nation and across the world, as well as to facilitate and encourage involvement in such issues.
“We are the only social justice and human rights club that focuses on both national and international issues” states Daniel. “At the moment, we are discussing what justice means, but we hope that by the end of this semester we can start acting upon our conversations.”
When asked for the reason behind starting this club, Jessica and Daniel responded, “It started with an idea. We are both passionate about saving the world and we felt as if we were not doing anything. So we went ahead and did something.”
OSE responded quite positively to the creation of this new organization, in part by the similarities found between The Fourth Estate Club and a former organization by the name of Advocacy Club.
Because of similar interest between this new organization and other existing organizations at McDaniel, Fourth Estate plans to partner with other clubs in the future. “We have a big event planned for the spring,” states Jessica. “It will be an event that will require the collaboration of this and other clubs with similar interests.”
If you are interested in joining, you can contact either Jessica or Daniel at mcdanielfourthestate@gmail.com, or you can visit their website at OrgSync.
Ukulele Club
A new musical addition to the McDaniel repertoire comes this fall: The Ukelele Club. Started by senior Norman Lezama, President, the club focuses on bringing ukulele players together.
“A small bunch of us would jam in the lounge room on the first floor of Levine. Then more people started coming to our jam sessions and we decided to become official” says junior Mariah Ligas, Treasurer, in regards to the beginnings of this club.
Last spring, when the club talked to OSE about becoming an official club on campus, there were only 8 members. By the beginning of this semester, that number had increased to 12, with a prospective of 30 students after involvement fair.
The momentum built by this club doesn’t stop at recruiting people. “We wanna hold a concert! We’re thinking of playing some holiday songs at the Alpha Psi Omega holiday cabaret at the end of the semester and hopefully holding our own mini-concert next semester” states Mariah.
Among the concerts they hope to hold, they also plan to bring ukulele performers to the community, as well as to buy ukuleles that will be rented to students interested in learning how to play the instrument but do not own one.
The future seems promising for this happy-tuned club. As Mariah would say, “Let’s spread the good vibes. It’s impossible to be unhappy when playing an ukulele.”
To contact the ukulele club, you can reach either Norman at njl003@mcdaniel.edu or Mariah at mcl012@mcdaniel.edu.
