The Carolina Beekeeping Club is a new student organization and one of the more than 150 that set up tables on Greene Street today for the organization fair.
Advocacy groups, video game clubs, sororities and fraternities, dance clubs and sports clubs — even sports that originated in novels and movies like Quidditch — lined the sides of Greene Street in front of Russell House. Each club had their own table with posters and informational pamphlets, some even offering free food.
The Carolina Beekeeping Club focuses on educating club members, advocating for bees, beekeeping, gardening and how to handle hives. The organization plans to have a hive and bees within the next couple of semesters but has already secured a spot for pollinating flowers in the Sustainable Carolina Garden.
Victoria Hill, a Carolina Beekeeping Club member and second-year environmental science and chemistry student, said that club members will learn about the ethics of beekeeping.
“You will definitely learn a lot about pollinating, colony collapse disorder and then just different ways that you can help advocate for them, like not using pesticides," Hill said.
The Gamecock Quidditch Club also attended the fair, and is similar to the game in the Harry Potter novels and movies. It is a co-ed full contact sports club, and the game is described as a mix of football, basketball and rugby.
Jared Woodard, a fourth-year chemical engineering student and Gamecock Quidditch coach, said the team will travel not only within South Carolina, but across the southeast into North Carolina, Florida and Texas if they win the regional finals.
Another organization present at the fair was Kosmic Dance Club, which provides students the opportunity to learn about K-pop music, language and culture through dance. Club members danced in front of their booth to attract potential members. However, no dancing experience is required to join. The club collaborates with other student organizations to put on performances throughout the year.
Jordan Wise, a third-year music education student and Kosmic Dance Club member, said the club offers students the ability to compete in online dance competitions which is unique to other dance clubs on campus.
“There’s some online competitions that are specifically for K-pop dance choreographies, and you can't really do that with hip-hop organizations because the song might be the jazzy-type," Wise said.
The Snaps Music Appreciation club is a weekly social club for music lovers to gather, listen to and discuss two albums each meeting. The two albums played at each meeting vary with a different member choosing each week.
Jodie Pacheco-Elizondo, a third-year Russian and international studies student, said that the club does not require members to attend every meeting and described the club as a causal group of people who want to appreciate music, which she said is a dying art form.
“I think it's our openness and our diversity," Pacheco-Elizondo said. "We don’t exclude people on what genres they like and we always encourage people who like things that we don’t like to come and tell us about it and expand our musical horizons while also expanding their own."