Every year, students partake in a club shopping event during lunch, but this year, club leaders presented 30-second promotional videos during an assembly Sept. 15 and had club shopping in Café Lab during lunch the same day.

With the addition of videos, 81 clubs were shown at the assembly, 10 of which are new this year. New clubs this year are AI and ML Club, Art to Heart, Careers Club, Foreign Film Club, GeoGuuesser, Girls Who Code, Mediclub, New Review Club, the U-High Economics Club and the U-High O’Hare.

Ana Campos, dean of students, said adding clubs’ videos is a holdover from distance learning.

“During COVID, when we couldn’t be together, the only way clubs could do club shopping was everyone created a video to talk about their club and they were great, like super creative,” she said. “It just seemed like this was a long time coming. Like, how could we help students better understand what the options are for them.”

With the new change Lusia Austen, a senior and co-president of Book Club who participated in club shopping last year, felt that the video addition to club shopping works.

“It gives you a list of what everything is and then you can go and search them out in the cafeteria later,” Lusia said, “’cause honestly, this is crazy and crowded and it’s hard to make progress and be fully aware of what you’re seeing. I think getting that list first really helps.”

Lusia also said how when she was a sophomore, club shopping was online and the videos were around a minute long, which helped her to find clubs.

Lia Teklu, a ninth grader who experienced club shopping for the first time this year, felt that club shopping is really fun and open and that she could freely look around without judgment.

“It was really fun,” Lia said. “It was just a fun time and a really nice experience. Without the videos I wouldn’t even know about half the clubs.”