Clubbing Science Olympiad

My views of the October Spectator article, “Committed to Clubbing.”

It’s a good article for those of us involved in clubs and teams, especially as officers. Leaving behind a dedicated core of officers and a mindset for leadership is particularly important for competitive teams. Their performance at tournaments when they represent Stuyvesant mirror the abilities of the officers of team to recruit, train, and organize.

Aside from that, I really take issue with how little exposure Stuy’s Science Olympiad team receives, especially in the Spectator.

I competed in SciOly for seven years (since 6th grade at middle school), and I’ve learned more about physics and electronics by building competitive devices for it than in any class. As a captain of the Stuy team, I took care of my share of recruitment and finances. SO was second only to Stuy itself in its impact on me. Now I help run a twelve thousand user community website for Science Olympiad and I volunteer at tournaments local to my university.

All the same, Spec covers Stuy SO less than Key Club, even though they’re about the same size and SO certainly does more for Stuy’s image and community impact. That’s not to mention kids in SO genuinely care about their education, not the line they could put on their college apps (BURN).

While I was on the team, the sort of questions we got from Spec and Standard were along the lines of, “why didn’t you guys win first at so-and-so tournament if your team name has Stuy kids in it?” (As an aside, the Standard was worse about that snobbery.) Well, if maybe we got a bit more name-dropping, we might have some more cred with the elite Stuyvies¹, some clout with the administration², and some more SU/PA/AA money³.

Stuyvesant’s newspapers need to realize that they are more than tabloids for SING! gossip or tirades against the Teitel administration. They actually matter to the community, and need to take responsibility when . The newest Science Olympiad president, Wei-Jean Chang, has been doing a great job getting the word out about the team, with the stuy.edu news posting, gratuitous advertising, and huge head start in the school year, which are all things our team has lacked.

Still, the team’s image has not gained the lustre of respect that Math Team has among the giants of Stuy nor among the science departments and administration, except with the superb biology section of the team. It will be a long while yet before Stuyvesant Science Olympiad attracts the wunderkind frosh and has its own schedule slot set aside⁴.

1. So then the best and brightest at Stuy won’t think Math Team is the only place for the biggest nerds [↩]
2. Maybe our SO program then can get the supported as well as those at other schools [↩]
3. So the SO team can actually afford to build robots and airplanes they need to compete. [↩]
4. Heck, this may not even suit Stuy’s loose, student-run SO team [↩]