The Backstory of the New Club Sign-Up System

A few weeks ago, the Breck upper school had its annual club fair. As usual, club leaders advertised their clubs to prospective members, and students got the chance to learn about Breck’s expansive list of clubs to join, but one thing was different: there was an improved sign-up system. To find out how this new system came to be, I interviewed Caleb Li ‘26, the mastermind behind it all.
Caleb recognized the issues with the old system, where many clubs listed were no longer active, but students were still able to sign up for them. Every year, Mr. Ohm would just make a copy of the previous year’s club list, not taking into account that many of them were no longer active. There were clubs on the list with leaders listed who had graduated two years earlier. Newer students wouldn’t know that they had already graduated, and they would sign up, only to realize it was no longer active when they didn’t get any emails or hear anything about club meeting times. Caleb aimed to streamline this process for students.
He brainstormed new ways that the sign-up could be improved, like an updated spreadsheet and Google form. In August, he sent an email to Mr. Ohm, who was excited about the idea of an updated system. Mr. Ohm also wanted to find a way to have a centralized system for club leaders to email students about club meetings and events. As Caleb put it, he had a “grand vision,” and Caleb is still working toward meeting that goal.
Now, when a club leader registers a club, it goes into a master Google sheet. Caleb and Mr. Ohm process the requests for clubs, and leaders get an email when their club is approved. When students sign up for clubs, their sign-ups go into a system that then emails the club leaders with a roster.
Caleb thinks that there has been a positive response from the Breck community about this new system, especially from club leaders. It helps them understand who is actually signed up for their club, as opposed to those who just wrote their name down at the club fair to get a piece of candy. He noted that there has been a bit of confusion due to the varying ways to sign up for clubs: the paper sign up at the club fair, the Google forms that club leaders make, and the official club sign-up system. He hopes to streamline this process even more to centralize the information for next year.
Caleb will graduate at the end of this year, so he won’t be able to continue to work on this new system for future years. He doesn’t know of anyone else in the Breck community who knows the Google Script language, which is how he made the system. He is working with the tech office on ways to make this system sustainable with plans for when he is gone, which could mean Breck outsourcing a company to continue this work. He also hopes to potentially make automated Google Classrooms for each club using his Google Script system.
Caleb first learned how to use Google Script back in fourth grade, when he used it on his travel diary project. He helped his teacher, Ms. Pape, to compile data about where all the travel diaries had been into one single map. He made his first Google Script project to convert the data from a Google form into this map. Since then, he has programmed many things, especially in robotics, which gave him the skills to take on this project.
Caleb’s new system has helped the Breck community to have a more cohesive process for club sign-ups, and we should all thank him and the tech office for all the work they have put into this!