Senior Mike Bestvina started the “24” Club last year with fellow “24” admirer Adam Gunnell ’07. This year, he’s not so sure about it anymore.

“I think I’m doing Euchre Club with my friend Gordon,” he said.

The past school year, Bestvina and Gunnell had started the “24” Club and soon became known for their creative “24” Club raps on the video announcements. According to Bestvina, the club meeting turnouts were numerous at first but after “the club changed its name to √576 Club, the numbers became smaller.”

Athletic Director Jim Inskeep, who now handles overseeing clubs, said he attributes the decline of a club to the narrowness of its view.

“Those groups tend to die off sometimes because it’s so narrow in scope or focus of what its interest is,” he said. “Whether that’s related to a TV show that maybe goes off the air, or maybe it’s just related to the fact that there’s not a large interest for it (clubs) in our school population.”

Bestvina and Gunnell started the ”24” club because they both had a common interest “24”.

Bestvina said, “We were just trying to start a club. (Gunnell) had always been into “24,” and I watched all the seasons over winter break last year, so I got really into it too.”

At “24” Club meetings, Bestvina said the club watched “24” every week. Then when the club changed its name to √576 Club, instead of just watching “24”, the club watched a different show every week. He said that the raps that they did on the announcements every week only helped to a certain extent, but no more than any other club making an announcement.

“You don’t have to do anything special,” Bestvina said.

Yet, Inskeep said he thinks that clubs who are on video announcements are probably the most active.

“It’s hard for me to say, not knowing the inner workings of every club. Just watching the video announcements I think kind of gives you a good idea of the kids that are doing the most, whether that is the Pro-Wrestling Club or “24” Club,” Inskeep said. “I have found that the ones that publicize the most probably have the most active groups (clubs) out of all of them. Video announcements (are) a great place to publicize them.”

Inskeep said that the types of clubs that he sees last the longest tend to be somewhat philanthropic in nature, like Key Club or CHS Angels. He said this is due to the fact that these clubs attract a broad base of the same student types, so they are able to have a lot of members each year.

“When you get seniors, juniors and sophomores, and maybe even a couple freshmen each year in a group like CHS Angels, the kids feel good about what they’re doing.” Inskeep said, “They’re making a difference but also they’re continuing on each year because of that large following.”

At the same time though, he said that the same thing applies to other clubs that advertise themselves. But the major factor in why those clubs that are more charity based have such a big turnout is due to attraction.

Inskeep said, “I think in our school community because we’ve pushed so much towards giving back to others and community service. I think that is what does draw a lot of students to those types of groups, and when you put that component into NHS, where they have to get hours, that’s what also helps out some those philanthropic groups.”

For Tianyi Zhang, Key Club president and junior, she said she joined Key Club because she really wanted to help out the community and because a lot of her friends were in the club. She said that being in charge of Key Club is a big responsibility but she will receive a lot of help from her board members.

As for why she thinks Key Club is so big here, Zhang said, “I think Key Club has done so much community service for really good causes, that’s why it’s stayed really prominent.”

But in Bestvina’s view, he said that clubs like Key Club are more “official” clubs with an established organization backing them and are different from student created clubs. He said that interest clubs similar to his like Film Club have similar turnouts to what Gunnell and he experienced at “24” Club. Bestvina said that there will always be small clubs like “24” Club or Film Club because there will be students who want are interested and want to have fun.

Inskeep had similar sentiments. He likens it to the fact that, for example, there will always be students who join interest clubs, like Pro-Wrestling Club or Video Game Club, because there will always be students who like pro-wrestling and who want to watch it.

“I think it just comes down to numbers more than anything else,” he said. “I think the best correlation you can draw to the longevity and success of the 100 plus clubs here is similar to TV shows. Your survivors have been there for a long time on the ratings.”

He said that similar to TV shows, the clubs that are just starting might be canceled if a lack of interest is shown.

“Some of them flourish because it continues to be interesting to people. That’s the best correlation that I can make. Because the reality is that a lot of shows that are in the top of the Nielson rating are not in their first year, very few are. A lot of those have been on five plus years,” he said.

Though there are positives to having so many varieties of clubs, big or small. Inskeep said that he thinks that pushing students to get more involved and to try to start new things if they’ve got common interest with other students are good things.

“I think that not limiting the number of clubs here is a good thing for us,” he said. “And we need to continue to promote that. In a school of our size we need to have opportunity there for kids. This is one way we provide that service to our students.”

And whether there will be a √576 Club this year, Bestvina said he doesn’t know.

“Probably not,” Bestvina said. “If someone were going to start it again, it’d be someone who went to the club but not many people went to the club, so I don’t think anyone would start it up again.”