Clubs are the cornerstone for many students’ extracurricular activities. Throughout their four years, students interact, participate or lead a Cal High club.

But the school currently has way too many clubs.

According to Cal’s official club roster for the 2025-26 school year, there’s a total of 206 clubs. Comparatively, the Educational Data Partnership website indicates that Cal has about 2,800 students.

Doing the math, that’s about 14 students per club at Cal. Students can join several clubs, of course, but that’s still a narrow ratio between students and clubs at Cal.

Inflating this ratio, several students are presidents of many clubs at the same time. Evidently, there’s nothing wrong with a student having a wide variety of interests. Clubs should exist to share student interests.

But when the same student is president of four or even five clubs as the official club roster indicates, it’s likely that academic clout is playing some role in their motivation to create or lead these organizations.

Inactive “ghost” clubs have become an increasing problem for the school as well. It’s not uncommon for students to form clubs, only for them to never meet and be disbanded by Cal’s Associated Student Body (ASB) during the year.

Interestingly, ASB has measures in place to prevent some of these issues.

In the past few weeks, students who are presidents of more than two clubs have been informed they must select only two clubs to lead. These students must also inform ASB of who will take over the remaining clubs.

ASB also tracks club’s meeting minutes, a measure that should ensure that most ghost clubs are disbanded.

But this isn’t always the case. Meeting minutes can and have been falsely reported by clubs in the past. Clubs can be inactive for months, only being disbanded if the club adviser is contacted and confirms the club’s inactivity.

To combat these issues effectively, ASB should enforce these club standards diligently. By having a scheduled check in with club’s advisers or necessitating pictures to confirm club’s meeting minutes, a higher bar would be enforced for a club’s activity.

Clubs are a key part of Cal’s identity, extracurriculars and culture. As such, it’s necessary for the school to be conscious of the issues plaguing them and work toward possible solutions.