Aileen Lutz, a second-year Fine Arts Theater student, revived Mercer’s only drama club in Fall 2025, hoping to provide an accessible space for students to get hands-on theater experience.
She singlehandedly took on all of the responsibilities to establish the club, excited to provide a new outlet for student creativity.
But due to lack of club enrollment, the drama club fell apart just one semester later. Lutz said,“I was having issues with getting people to actually stay at the table…people weren’t motivated to come to the meetings.”
The decreasing participation Lutz is seeing is not unique to Drama Club. According to survey data taken by the VOICE, 75% of students out of 44 participants have seen information about clubs this semester, but only 43% of students actually joined one despite 75% expressing their interest.
According to a 2021 article in PubMed Central, only 13% of community college students participate in clubs, whereas 45% of four-year college students participate in clubs.
Based on analysis from Pubmed Central, students who participate in student engagement activities are more likely to persist and graduate. Data from the Mercer County Community College website reveals that graduation rates as of 2019, are 19%.
Club presidents at Mercer attribute several reasons for the decline in club enrollment to conflicts with busy scheduling.
Eri Stenger, a second-year education student and president of Rainbow Alliance said, “I remember, some people couldn’t join this club because they started running classes at noon. So it’s hard to find a time where no one has class.”
Lutz said, “people weren’t motivated to come to the meetings. I had a lot of people interested in events, but not meetings.” Lutz additionally expressed, “I think that one of the issues is just scheduling. It’s almost impossible because the class schedules are so all over the place.”
Brandon Sewdass, vice president of student government association (SGA) said, “there’s not enough people to have every club be very active. People see the clubs that are very active and flock to them, but the other clubs struggle a little more for attendance.”
Students have their own concerns regarding club timing.
Sarah Moshin, a second-year graphic design student, said of clubs,“a lot of the ones I wanted to [attend] meet on Mondays or Wednesday at 12 [but] I have a class during that.”
Club advisors see this as a larger issue, not just at Mercer.
Maggie Leppert, the disability club advisor, said,“I think it’s really hard being a two-year college, the turnover is so quick that by the time students even find out about us, they’re halfway out the door.”
Despite the issues mentioned, some club presidents have found solutions to maintain a steady flow of students, with one solution being hosting events.
Marcus Marshall, president of gaming club said, “most of the time we do four or five events a semester and most clubs barely do one or two.”
Leppert said, “I think that one thing we’ve done well is having events at different times so that it’s not high pressure. You can come for five minutes and then leave.”
Additionally, club presidents discovered ways to work around student scheduling.
Stenger said,“we’ve just kind of polled people for what day would be best.” Stenger also expressed,“it’s pretty easy to work around it.”
Genesis Vargas, a communications major and president of disability club said, “we did weekly meetings before, but now we’re doing monthly.”
Marshall said, “You got to at least try because that’s what matters…that’s how we kept on going forward…we try our best.”
