Gardening Club may have won “Club of The Year” for the 2021-2022 academic year, but at the March 1st SGA meeting, it was voted into archival. This vote took place after the club has lost two presidents and there was no one left to run it.
The club was started in October 2021 by president Josh Dick and vice president Andrew McKeen. Dick had a love for gardening and connected well with students on campus. SGA president Quinlan Peer said, “[Dick] had a great love for plants. He knew how to garden and he knew how to run gardening events.” During their run, the club planted 900 bulbs and put three evergreen trees outside of the Arnold/Bayley Residence Halls, among other campus beautifying activities. “One of the things Gardening Club did was put holiday lights on the trees in Veteran’s Park. To our knowledge, that had not been done before successfully. We had people come up to Josh and I for weeks afterward telling us how much they loved the lights,” McKeen said.
Dick transferred from the Lyndon campus at the end of the Spring 2022 semester, however, leaving the club without a president. Most of the people in the club were friends and did not have any previous gardening experience. After Dick left, McKeen decided to keep the club running, hoping someone would come along interested in taking over. “I was the only one left. I didn’t do much except look for a president.” McKeen tried to get recruitment up, hanging posters around campus, but no one showed up to meetings. “It was just the exec board. People would get involved, but it would only be at a base level.”
Eventually, the club found a new president in Jane Bradley, a first-year psychology major, last semester. However, she transferred to Castleton in December. Losing a second president left the club with nowhere left to turn. McKeen told The Critic, “At this point, our only option was archival.”
“Everyone has at least a little interest in gardening. It was a place where people from all different majors could come together, garden, hang out, and make the campus a better place. Hopefully, it will come back.” – Andrew McKeen
McKeen is sad to see the club go but hopes that it will come back. “At first, I was disappointed because I put all this effort into saving the club, but clubs come back from archival all the time. It is not the end of the Gardening Club forever. Someone else will come in. The club has the potential to succeed.”
The Student Government is also sad to see the club go. Peer said, “I really hope someone, that is really into gardening restarts the club and has the impact the original Gardening Club had.”
Gardening Club is not the only club to go into archival due to low involvement within the past year. Peer told The Critic that the best way to curve this would be for students to attend club meetings. “If you want to see clubs survive and things change on campus, be [that] change,” he said.