Washington-Liberty is notorious for its vast array of clubs and organizations. They provide every student involved with a community and a purpose. Every year countless new clubs are founded, but many of them can go undiscovered due to issues with the club’s advertisement or them having a small target audience. 

Three of these new clubs created this year are the Mock Trial Club, the Students of Conscious Checklist Club and the Washington-Liberty Songwriters Club. These clubs each provide unique possibilities and community for students.

Amy Dardelli is a junior and the co-founder of the Mock Trial club alongside Vedica Chudiwale. The two formed the Mock Trial Club to support students that are interested in pursuing law-related majors in college. This club teaches students a wide range of new skills, such as public speaking and argumentative skills, and it could be found interesting to many students no matter what their interests may be.

“The purpose of our club is to gather a group of students that works on one mock trial case a year,” said Dardelli. “It’s perfect for people that are interested in public speaking, acting, or just interested in the law overall.”

Joining a club is a commitment that students should be dedicated to if they are considering it.

However, the commitment level of the Mock Trial Club is flexible. Therefore this could be beneficial to students with busy schedules, as they can still join if they feel a passion towards the purpose of the club. 

“For meetings we are doing every other Tuesday right now, however we do want people that join our club to be somewhat committed,” said Dardelli. “This is not saying if you walk into the room you have to be participating and invested, but we do want a core few that are interested in the case.”

Each club has a different goal and a different thing they are striving to achieve. For the Mock Trial Club, they work on one case all year to bring it to a competition. This club may be of interest to people who are interested in long term projects rather than small, short-term activities.

“Vedica has already registered us for a competition, [and] the case comes out Dec. 1,” said Dardelli. “The final case update is on Jan. 2 because they release it in parts, so we do have plenty of time as of right now.”

Overall, any degree of immersion into this club could provide students with a community and teach them many powerful skills, such as critical thinking, public speaking, analytical abilities, argumentative capabilitiesand teamwork. 

“You will learn as you go, no matter what you do, even if you’re not putting in a lot of effort, you will learn how to do mock trial,” said Dardelli.

Mira Babichenko is a sophomore and the co-founder of the Students of Conscious Checklist Club at the school, along with sophomore Sophie Moret. The club is tied to the greater organization of Americans of Conscious Checklist, which is based on Democracy, therefore Babinchenko and Moret focus on the spread of Democracy within the school. This entails contacting elected representatives, promoting voting in any level of election and supporting the rights of all people on no account of race, gender, religion or anything else.

“There is an organization called Americans of Conscious checklist and they have little things that people can do at home, like sign a petition, that helps democracy going and has constituents play a role,” said Babichenko. “We wanted to have that same theme but on a smaller scale, so just doing smaller things in our community that will make a difference so kids can have a purpose.”

The two began the club in August of this year and have already achieved some of their short term goals. Now, students joining the club at this point in the school year can help the club continue to achieve these goals and eventually some of its longer term aspirations.

“So far we have done little acts,” said Babichenko. “We have written letters to local political figures and school board people, and made posters for a food drive that we are going to start this month.”

Anyone can take the step to start a club, but following through with it is the difficult part. However, getting through that process and into the actual experience of running the club can be very rewarding, especially for a person’s leadership skills. “We already had this idea to start a club last year but we never took that step, so in the summer we actually met up and formed plans,” said Babichenko. 

The commitment level of the Students of Conscious Checklist club is low, therefore students who want to be a part of another club or sports team can do so and be an active member of both. This can be beneficial to students who have many interests or want to explore many different clubs.

“We have a meeting only once a month, which is quite different from other [clubs],” said Babichenko. “We do have some out of school opportunities coming up, like volunteering, but it is all optional so it is really low commitment for a new person.”

Harper Rath is a junior at and the co-founder of the Washington-Liberty Songwriters Club in company with Lorelai Mishra. The club focuses on teaching students how to write, produce music and the key skills that come with it.

“It’s a place for all of the songwriters at W-L to come together and both share their work and to create new songs, but then also if you don’t have experience it’s a way for you to learn about songwriting” said Rath.

The club provides a community for anyone interested in the business of songwriting, even people with little to no experience. The club could even be interesting for people who simply enjoy listening to music.

“I feel like so many kids play instruments and sing on their own time and they just don’t know that anyone else does,” said Rath. “Both me and Lorelai do and we just wanted a place where we could share our ideas and work on things together.”

Since starting the club at the end of the 2024-2025 school year, Rath and Mishra have tried many strategies to promote their club and gain members. These tactics are necessary for starting a new club, as gaining members initially is difficult but can become easier as members themselves begin to promote the club. 

“A big part of it was creating a social media, and then a lot of it was also just word of mouth,” said Rath. 

In their meetings, the Washington-Liberty Songwriters Club hosts workshops that dive into the elements of music production and gives free time for members to brainstorm and work on their original pieces. They work to compile everyone’s skills so that every person has a role.

“So far we’ve written a couple songs together as a group,” said Rath. “We have started signing up for open mic nights where we can go and perform our original pieces in public and things like that. 

Overall, students are provided with a variety of opportunities to get involved in the school community, most of them being student-led clubs. The benefits of these are often not utilized by students, mostly because a large quantity of clubs that the school offers can be overwhelming and hard to choose from. However, joining a club offers students a sense of community and a chance to develop valuable skills that can lead to personal, professional and academic growth.

“Sophie and I were in some clubs but not as many in freshman year, and we just were not as interested in those clubs,” said Babichenko. “I feel like none of them really did what we wanted to do, so we wanted to do that ourselves.”