Is the club system broken?

Many of us have heard the sentence, “I love them individually, but I can’t stand that club as a whole.”

The club system at Oklahoma Christian is almost as old as the university itself. The two oldest social service clubs on campus, Theta Theta Theta and Kappa Sigma Tau, were founded in 1968 and 1969, respectively. The first Spring Sing took place in 1968 and a picture in the Admissions Office dates the intramural program to nearly the same time.

Clubs, intramural, Spring Sing and even Homecoming were all put together as something that if you put in some hard work, you’ll get a reward and even some friendly competition out of it. But have we, the club members, taken that friendly competition a little too far?

Don’t get me wrong, competition is fun. The tension between two clubs at an intramural game is what makes the games so exciting. But are we crossing the line when we have to worry about a fight breaking out in a C league basketball game?

The problem starts with rush. Some extreme members draw a line between themselves and members of other clubs, deeming that they can’t be friends just because they are not in the same club. Trust me, it happens. It’s happened to me.

With rush, come labels. It’s enough that we can’t escape the labels that society puts on us based on gender, body type, the clothes we wear, the things we eat and where we come from. But we constantly have to avoid the labels that are thrown around on the campus by other Christians based on the club that we’re in.

Most student know the offensive puns tied nearly every club name. These are things that we hear every day on this campus, but does anyone ever try to stop them? Where do we, as club members, put down our club colors and our pride and remember that before we’re members of clubs, we’re members of the body of Christ?

It’s okay for us to have our rivalries in Spring Sing and on the intramural fields, but we have taken those rivalries too far.

Maybe it’s not even our faults. Maybe these extreme rivalries and hatred for other clubs were caused by students who stepped onto Oklahoma Christian’s campus long before we did, but now we have the chance to make amends and heal our club system.

We have the chance to still keep the rivalries and our clubs in place, but loosen the reigns a little bit. We have the chance to cross the lines and shake hands with one another and remember that though we may not be brothers or sisters in a club, we’re still – and always will be – brothers and sisters in Christ.

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