Diversity among Palo Alto High School’s student body is beginning to even out, according to a cumulative enrollment graph on race and ethnicity created by Education Data Services. This has resulted in the creation of cultural clubs as a way to build community within the school.
A student diversity chart created by U.S. News & World Report between 2021 and 2023 indicates that 64.8% of Paly’s enrollment consisted of students from minority backgrounds, or students who are not white. Information submitted to the California Department of Education for the 2023-24 school year indicates that there was a slight increase to 65.1%.
During the 2023-24 school year, Paly offered six cultural clubs for students to attend. This year Paly increased its numbers from six to ten ethnic and cultural clubs: Cultural Connections Club, Asian History and Geopolitical Club, Chinese Club, Singaporean Students’ Society, Japanese Culture Club, Beyond Bollywood, Middle Eastern and South Asian Student Association, Jewish Student Union, Latino Unidos and Black Student Union.
This increase in cultural clubs has given the different cultures at Paly more representation by increasing club participation.
Senior Henry Leins, co-president of the Singaporean Students’ Society, says he believes that cultural clubs are a fun way to bring people of the same cultural backgrounds together.
“It [Singapore] is a really small country, so finding … other people with the same heritage in the U.S. was interesting,” Leins said. “We [the presidents] wanted to share that [heritage] as a club, and just bring people together.”
Motoko Iwata, a junior and co-president of Japanese Culture Club, said that while there is a lot of diversity at Paly, minority cultures are still often overlooked.
“Identifying individual cultures and giving each culture a voice is … something that’s really important, especially on a campus as diverse as Paly,” Iwata said. “For example, Paly has a really vast Asian population, but that Asian population includes Indian people, Chinese people, Japanese people, Korean people, and sometimes they [the ethnic groups] are more or less grouped together.”
In the Singaporean Students’ Society’s first meeting, Leins said that he and his co-president asked students to fill out a Google form sharing their ideas for future club activities and events.
“I thought something … that would be fun is watching “Crazy Rich Asians,” Leins said. “We’ve brought in a bunch of satay, which are chicken skewers from a local Singaporean restaurant. We shared that … and I’m thinking throughout the year we’re going to have guest speakers and … celebrations of holidays and traditions.”
Leins said he believes that bringing in cultural foods is a good way to incorporate and engage students into the culture and to promote community building whether or not they are culturally Singaporean.
“It [the club] is not just for Singaporean students, but we kind of just wanted to share that culture … especially the food,” Leins said.
For some students, cultural clubs are a place to find support and solidarity amid times of struggle. Keerthi Raj, a junior and the co-president of MESA, said she believes that some cultural clubs hosted this year stem from current global events.
“Because there’s so much in the current day, like war and political instability, … a lot of people who support these regions have created clubs to support one another,” Raj said.
Tali Lehrer, co-president of JSU, echoes the sentiment.
“The war in Israel and anti-semitism across the world, specifically in the United States, has made it [the JSU] … an even more welcoming and supportive space, especially for Jewish students who need that right now and maybe don’t find that around California,” Lehrer said.
Despite this, the majority of Paly students do not participate in cultural clubs.
Ami Yamaguchi, a junior and co-president of Japanese Culture Club, encourages people to expand their cultural bubbles by attending cultural club meetings.
“I would say that they [cultural clubs] are not a waste of time because … when I go to other cultural clubs, they look at things completely different than how my culture would look at it, so I think it’s interesting to learn about that.”
Through this, Iwata said she believes that these clubs can build understanding among students with different opinions.
“Paly has a huge problem of people clustering [in cliques], and there’s also a big problem with polarization in the current world … which stems from a lack of understanding,” Iwata said. “Cultural clubs in general offer the opportunity to engage with different cultures, and I think building those connections across campus is really important in such a dividing time.”