While sitting at her desk on September 8, Club Med sponsor Alyssa Ament checks her email. Club Med meetings will be exclusively virtual for the first semester.

Due to changes because of COVID-19 including cohorts and the lack of a late bus, Club Med officers will host all first semester meetings virtually via discussion boards and/or Zoom.

“Bringing them physically to the school where half can be at school and the other half has to come to school and there’s no late buses and that sort of situation, it’s just too detrimental to actually maintain the club,” Rineet Ranga, Club Med president and junior, said. “And I feel like if we switch fully virtual for this semester we can try it out and see different opportunities, because before we couldn’t have guest speakers, due to COVID it’s going to be hard to bring them in, but virtually they can join in on Zoom calls and talk to us that way.”

According to Club Med sponsor Alyssa Ament, Club Med, like other clubs, will be starting later this year to let students adjust to the changes, although no concrete meeting dates have been set. She said she leaves most of the decisions about meeting dates and activities up to club officers.

According to Ranga, activities like dissections are not an option for the first semester. Instead, meetings will focus on guest speakers and external activities like competitions and research projects.

“I know a lot of clubs are going to be hurt by not having the physical presence of the club, but I think we’re still going to be perfectly fine,” Ranga said. “It’s not really affecting much, I mean, yeah, dissections and activities, but besides that we’re still pretty much the same club.”