A ‘Home’ for all

The Video Game Development Club. Students for Sustainability. The Ayn Rand Club. The African Student Union.

Thousands of new students at UC Irvine considered joining some of the school’s hundreds of clubs Monday, while they strolled amid a sea of easy-up canopies, fliers and freebies at the Anteater Involvement Fair.

Monday was the first day of Welcome Week for the school’s incoming freshmen. They took the opportunity to wander around and make new friends while learning to navigate the campus.

Each of the school’s student clubs and organizations tried to out-do each other, luring would-be new members to their tables with costumes, contests and music.

The Taekwondo at UCI club gave out Otter Pops. Mark Mendiola of Kababayan, the school’s Filipino student organization, held aloft the club’s mascot, Jasper, a giant paper-mache water buffalo.

Members of the Pilipino Pre-Health Undergraduate Student Organization, or PUSO, wore cardboard chocobos, yellow birds from the Final Fantasy video game series, around their waists to attract attention.

Kababayan focuses on academic, cultural, social, political and community events and assistance, like peer mentoring, tutoring in Tagalog — the language of the Philippines — bonfires and informal sports like broomball.

The clubs see the fair as an invaluable way to expose UCI’s incoming freshmen to their activities.

“We more than doubled our people through last year’s event,” said Mike Polidori of the Triathlon Club.

The club, in only its third year of existence, helps students train and participate in about a half dozen triathlons throughout the season, including one on campus.

Students from all walks of life sign up for the club, Polidori said.

“Some people have never done a triathlon, and some have done more triathlons than I have,” he said.

Business was brisk for the club representatives.

“It’s been going great so far,” said Miriam Laibson, of UCI’s Hillel club. The Jewish student union used giveaways and T-shirts to bring students to their table, and offers a variety of events and programs throughout the school year.

“It’s a little home away from home for them,” said Hillel President Ami Kurzweil.

His group is working to get a permanent home on campus, and has started a new marketing campaign that makes the club “fun and cool,” with innovative events and lots of coalition building, he said.

But many students signed up for dozens of clubs based on their names or the quality of their freebies, rather than the clubs’ activities.

“I just got into it, but I don’t even know what it’s gonna be about,” a student told her friend after signing up to join the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.