by Rojas Oliva, entertainment editor
Every Tuesday after school, the members of Consol’s newest club suit up to do battle with the villainous reign of colored paper in the recycling bins. These brave young men and women take upon themselves the task of ridding every teacher’s classroom of those pesky and persistently full purple recycling bins and ensuring it all lands in the proper recycling authority’s hands. This is but one of the missions of HERO (Helping Everyone Reach Out) club.
“This is the largest number of people I’ve ever seen recycling,” recycling director Zeke Hsieh said.
BRANCHING OUT
This boost in numbers is mostly due to the hype surrounding the rebranding of Key Club as a new, independent student-created and -run organization. This change was necessary, as last year Consol’s branch of Key Club lost its charter due to some mix-ups with the national chain having student emails, a violation of school policy.
“At that point at the end of the year we decided that, yes, we wanted to continue,” project manager Emily Miaou said.
In a joint decision between last year’s graduating seniors and the current leaders of HERO club, they decided to start a club with the same project and volunteer-based ideals that Key Club had emphasized, while still ensuring that they took advantage of their freedom.
“Once we were no longer associated with Key Club, we wanted to be different,” HERO Club president Yasin Haque said.
Some of these differences manifested themselves in new projects for the club.
“As a club formed by the school and by students, we’re allowed to do much more school-oriented things,” Miaou said.
So this year, along with recycling, they plan on volunteering at the food bank, assisting with Keep Brazos Beautiful’s Earth Day celebration and donating money to DC Entertainment’s We Can Be Heroes project, which donates dollar for dollar amounts to areas in the Horn of Africa.
A GOOD IDEA?
Some, however, miss the national recognition that Key Club had.
“I really wish we had a parent organization. [Now] we’re just a random club; we don’t have the support. For the people concerned with a résumé, it’s like ‘HERO Club–what’s that?’ Key Club actually [had] a name,” Hsieh said. “It’s like you have two schools–[one is] Harvard, and [the other] school [has] an education that [is] just as good only it wasn’t called Harvard. I mean, it’s just brand name.”
NEW FREEDOMS
However, Hsieh did admit that HERO Club’s independence has granted them opportunities for bigger projects.
“You get a lot of mixed reactions because some people have been with Key Club since freshman year, but although we lost the backing a lot of the things that we did with Key Club, we can still do without it,” Miaou said. “Some of the things we had problems with when we were in Key Club [were] with the sponsorship and it kind of restricted us to doing certain things.”
Beyond expanding their freedom in selecting projects, they were also able to create an organization that allows membership for everyone and requires no dues.
“It allows more people to feel free to join, come in and try it out,” Miaou said. “You don’t have to be stuck there after you pay your dues [feeling] obligated, and I think this will help attract a lot of freshmen and sophomores.”
As of yet that prediction has been accurate, and with so many people showing up to help recycle, it seems HERO Club really is helping everyone reach out.
