As I walked into the Black Box theater to watch the opening night of Fata Morgana’s 2026 winter showcase, I was stunned. Unlike the jam-packed crowd I’ve seen at past performances, there were a handful of people in attendance, only four of them students. Seeing this reminded me of the recent sports games, club meetings and other school activities where I often see few students attending.
Sophomore Nikki Smallwood, who danced in Fata both semesters her freshman year, also noticed the low turnout at this year’s performances. Like at a sports game, a small crowd can make dancers feel less supported and not perform at their best. “A lot of it,” Smallwood said about the performances, “is the dancers building off of the audience’s energy. So I think it really is important for there to be a big, active audience every night.”
Students should show up to events and support fellow students in various spaces, including performances like Fata. In recent years, I have seen event attendance dwindle. Since the 2023-2024 school year, my freshman year, club participation has seemed more sparse, especially among underclassmen.
My friends and I often recall our freshman year and how we avidly put our names down for as many clubs as we could at the club fair. After signing up, we consistently attended meetings.
During my freshman orientation, upperclassmen encouraged us to sign up for as many clubs as possible. Those juniors and seniors made it feel like club participation was an essential part of GDS culture. Back then, my biggest problem with clubs was deciding where to go if two clubs were meeting at once. Now, when I look into any club meeting, I rarely see underclassmen, and, if I do, it’s the same few attending several meetings.
Freshman Rohan Le attends club meetings frequently, but he said that many freshmen do not. Le said he thinks underclassmen worry about their classmates perceiving them negatively, and he thinks his classmates are sometimes nervous to try new things. “It’s kind of hard to convince some of my friends to go because they feel like it’s kind of weird,” he said.
Le said his classmates sometimes feel like they will be seen as “nerdy” if they attend clubs, especially political clubs like Student Voices or the Student Action Committees.
Freshman Marlowe Mulvihill, co-head of the Hoppers Rock club, said she is interested in going to other club meetings but often does not end up attending because of schedule conflicts. “I’ll be doing work or meeting with a teacher,” Mulvihill said.
During the day of deliberation this school year—a special programming day for political discourse—there were very few seniors in attendance. Upperclassmen attendance that day was a lot different from the community engagement I would have expected coming out of freshman orientation.
Upperclassmen model GDS’ culture for underclassmen. If new students come into the high school and are exposed to an anti-participatory attitude, they could be deterred from getting involved in the variety of activities that define our school.
Even if it takes some time away from your studies or friends, attending events outside the classroom will allow you to meet people who aren’t in your grade or a person whom you wouldn’t usually talk to. By simply chatting with them, you gain new perspectives on navigating high school, and you hear about interests and backgrounds you haven’t encountered before.
Without community, we risk the things that make GDS unique, like each grade level avidly competing with each other on First Friday, student performances at Monday Meeting and sports team psyches before competitions. GDS could become a school solely characterized by rigorous academics and a unique founding rather than one where students truly thrive.
My hope is that the next time I see Fata perform, there will be cheering crowds of students in the audience every night. The next time I walk into a club meeting, I hope to see faces from all four grades. And I hope that younger grades will begin to attend meetings they are interested in without fear of judgment from their peers so that we continue to foster a school environment where people are invested in the community.