Club spotlight: Love More, TCG Union, SLAM Club, Jewish Club

There are plenty of activities for students to participate in here at Aragon, from sports teams and leadership classes to the yearbook or service commission. Aragon clubs range from ethnicity orientated to faith oriented, while others involve video games or pastimes. When you add them all up, you get 76 unique groups to choose from. Here are a few to be featured this month.

Trading Card Gamers Union

The club was formed in 2009 as current president and senior Eric Cura recalls “Back in sophomore year me and my friend started hanging out. Us and a few other people started out here [in the library] playing Yu-Gi-Oh and other trading card games.” The players meet in the morning, at lunch and occasionally gets involved in events outside of school. “We play at tournaments, some of our more veteran members like myself and a couple others, try to participate in tournaments, [consistently]. We’ve done average, we win some we lose some, usually a five- win five loss record as a team,” says Cura who’s been playing Yu-Gi-Oh since middle school.

Love More

The Love More Club was started by seniors Eric Torres and Brenda Lara to help students deal with the modern challenges of high school. “We teach our peers about ways to deal with issues or situations which students typically deal with in high school, whether it’s stress, bullying, depression, etc.,” says Torres. The club was actually first known as the Love and Awareness club. “I then realized that I wore a dog tag necklace that says, ‘There is no remedy for love but to…’ on one side, and ‘LOVE MORE’ in capital letters on the other side. Brenda and I thought that ‘Love More’ was a much catchier name, and we just ran with it,” says Torres. For students who need help, or just want to create a more positive school environment, the Love More club meets every Monday in room 120.

SLAM Club

The Students Literary Arts Movement is a club that’s been around for only two years. “Many of the members and all of the club officers are seniors this year. As of now, there are no new officers in line for next year,” says club president Dina Marshalek. The idea for this club came to Marshalek after watching a YouTube video in her freshman year English class about a slam poem. This poetry slam inspired her as well as senior vice president Emma Walsh to host the first club meeting last year. “Club members perform and share various works from Def Poetry performances to Kanye West music videos. It’s refreshing to look at the classroom as a place of student creativity rather than just a lecture space,” says Marshalek. Slam Club meets every Monday in room 125.

Jewish Club

The Jewish club brings together people of the same faith and beliefs every other Friday at lunch. “The club has been around for a pretty long time,” says junior Jewish Club president Meredith Charlson. “We’ve had [guest speakers] come from the program ‘Abraham’s Vision’ to talk about Jewish-Muslim relations. The man who came runs the program and it’s all about Jewish teens and Muslim teens talking to each other,” comments Charlson. In the weeks ahead, the club will be hosting a holocaust survivor and former partisan who fought the Nazis in the woods of Eastern Europe.