52 OPEN HOUSE The social club process begins with new regulations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Men and women’s social clubs held the first officer open houses of fall 2020 on Saturday, Aug. 29. Open houses were modified to adhere to CDC guidelines to ensure the health and safety of everyone involved. Ju Go Ju President senior Taylor Kittinger said she did her best to make sure the social club process would not be the cause of a possible COVID-19 outbreak on campus. “This year, we are just making sure that everyone is wearing a mask and can social distance as much as possible,” Kittinger said. Senior Landon Lipp, president of Gamma Sigma Phi, said their open house’s traditional activities and attendance changed in fall 2020. In years past, the club provided refreshments for their prospective club members, but that could not happen in fall 2020. “We were told we could not have [refreshments] this year, so that already added up to a kind of tough transition,” Lipp said. With these new guidelines, officers found it difficult to identify and connect with freshmen. “It’s a hard time recognizing the freshman or anyone else that is pledging across campus because everyone has masks on,” Lipp said. “It’s so hard to identify them based on a half of their face.” Officers were creative due to the new precautions in place, especially with the signing-in process. “I really have loved how our recruitment director has stepped up and gotten so creative with this process,” Kittinger said. “What we have done is use QR codes for everything.” While some club participation seemed unaffected by the new rules and situation, others saw low attendance at their open houses. “For us, it seemed like there were definitely less people,” Lipp said. “I definitely believe there is less enthusiasm than there was before about the club process.” Many students agreed that the semester was intimidating due to the pandemic, but some saw it as an opportunity to connect with their peers. Freshman Anna Langdon said she was still interested in joining a social club in 2020 regardless of the challenges. “It was definitely hard, but [COVID-19] made it a new way to automatically connect with other people,” Langdon said. Although the social club process at Harding was different in 2020, officers believed it was still important to give it a try. “Social clubs are not for everybody, but I would highly recommend getting involved because it is another family,” Kittinger said. “Being a senior and looking back at the amount of friends I’ve made because of being in a social club, I would say it’s absolutely worth it.” story by Daniela Cuellar MASKme about CLUBS
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