Boom or Doom, Brat summer posters and “apples rotten to the core dances” are just some ways We the People, the current events club, have rebranded. Leading the rebrand are Co-Presidents Tabitha Htoka and Tiffany Costa.
“Tabitha has been in it since freshman year, so last year at the last meeting we asked for a bit of leadership because we need it for college applications. Then over the summer we realized that the old [club] presidents were too involved with other things to focus on We the People, so with their permission we took over as presidents and started doing our own thing,” Costa said.
According to its club sponsor, We the People used to be the Young Republicans, changing to be a space for all political views.
“[Mark] Kienast [club sponsor] described it as Republicans that didn’t want to vote for Trump and more and more people started joining so they realized that they should let anyone join no matter their political views. Now we talk about current events so we’re trying to meet every two weeks because there’s always something new and so we literally just bring up the topic and everyone starts talking about it,” Costa said.
Since the rebrand the club has had record attendance with more than double people attending the first meeting compared to the club’s previous meetings.
“I think adding trends to the meeting helps make it less intimidating, and me and Tiffany have noticed a lot of the recent SGA [Student Government Association] elections have been using ‘brat’ as a part of their campaign. Especially because if it doesn’t work people wouldn’t use it,” Htoka said.
The club has started doing “Boom or Doom,” which essentially is the club determining if current events are good or bad news. This helps avoid arguments and helps students talk about their political views in a less heated manner. Costa also thinks the rebrand has helped students attend.
“I think the [trendy posters, topics, and social media posts] helps get people to come to the meeting because it would just come for fun and for the food, and because it’s a political club I don’t want people to be scared to come and voice their opinions so we tried to make it very laid back and chill and we make jokes,”
The club meets every other Thursday and discusses new and global headlines.
“Come if you like politics or if you just like snacks. You don’t have to be a political person to enjoy it; it’s pretty fun and you can make friends,” Htoka said.
