Written by Joseph Dickerson
During the past week at Harding University, you could have heard and seen the obvious signs of Club Week all over campus. Sounds of women’s clubs practicing their cheers in high pitched voices and men’s clubs yelling out their chants as loud as they could bounced off building walls at all times of the day and night. Uniformed dress, both traditional and obscure are worn proudly all week long by the new club members.
The student center was constantly bustling with club members awaiting inductees for their clubs to come by for signatures and directions on what crazy thing to do next. If you were not careful, you might even receive an “orange crush” from a Shantih inductee; they even got President David Burks.
Many students who have never participated in club events during club week wonder who has a more strenuous club week, women or men. Both must endure added physical and emotional stress on top of what they might be encountering from school assignments and tests during the week.
Women’s clubs have their inductees dress in the club colors all week and most have a certain defining trait that is easily noticeable. These include hair bows, hats, sticks and other random things. Name tags are normally required at all times as well. There is more emotional testing during their club week and many late nights trying to get club members signatures.
Men’s clubs give their inductees crazy pledge names, and they can be asked to recite their names at anytime. They also have uniformed dress codes during the week where they must all look the same or at least similar. Some say the pledge book for men is more work than the women.
“The pledge book was annoying and I remember staying up all night on Wednesday night with not more than four hours of sleep on all of the other nights,” said Sean Smith, a member of Kingsmen remembering his club week experience. “Physical activity, team building and unity” were things that stood out about club week to Michael Williams, a member of BOX.
Many current members agree that club week is easier now than it was when they pledged a club.
“I think that the rules have become even stricter, and thus the pledge process has almost become a joke for many clubs,” said Smith.
So when it comes to club week it seems both sides have a long week ahead of them. Different challenges both involving little to no sleep, pledge books to finish by Thursday and classes to keep up in. With men’s clubs running around physically exhausted from activity and women’s clubs screaming at the tops of their lungs practicing for roll call, it’s difficult to make the call on who has it worst.
