For college students, joining a club can take more of a toll on them than it can provide resources.
Every semester, there is an event on campus where dozens of college clubs can showcase their cause and why you need to join their club. With this bombardment of information, and pressure to commit to these various organizations, students often say they feel pressured to immediately decide which club to commit to, and not when they can afford to commit.
An article published by Sunil Pandey of gethow.org in 2014 addressed the top reasons why students feel joining a campus club should not be required of them. The leading reason was distraction to studies.
Pandey argues that joining the social activity of a campus club can derail a student’s educational goals by taking their attention away from studying and aiming their focus at social gatherings to promote the club.
If students are investing hundreds and maybe thousands of dollars into their tuition, why should they be required to risk earning the best possible grades?
Although not all college campuses make joining a club a requirement for students to graduate, college counselors heavily influence students to make time in their busy schedules to participate in college clubs. The problem is that some students may have other responsibilities, such as raising a family, working, or juggling all of that and full-time class loads. Joining a club could cut into their busy schedules even more.
Peer pressure adds to the stress of joining college clubs, among the added pressure of counselors and club rushers.
In some reported cases, college students become victims of hazing or bullying once they joined a club because it may be a social initiation protocol for that club’s agenda.
This happens to students when they are rushed or pressured to join a club and fail to research the club’s history.
In July 2014, Cal State University, Northridge student and fraternity member Armando Villa was pressured by his frat brothers to hike in extreme weather conditions to become officiated into the fraternity, the Los Angeles Times reported.
This resulted in Villa’s death by dehydration and a loss for his loved ones. Joining clubs could potentially be fatal, and death by hazing is common in larger universities like CSUN.
Although joining college clubs has benefits, such as networking, resume building, and work experience, becoming a club member on campus should not be required for students to succeed because it could be more detrimental than beneficial to the student accepting the invite.