Club members clamor and bustle around, in search of a seat. The air is buzzing with excitement and hope as everyone celebrates the Inter-Club Council’s very first time at the drawing board. Pitches are exchanged and the room is full, but there is still the lingering promise of space for expansion in the future. It is a new moment for Oviedo High School as students revitalize the collaboration and impact that has been needed on campus. 

The ICC may seem like a brand-new concept, but actually has been a part of OHS history for some time. The council’s reign had ended only two years after Student Government Association Representative, Heather DeLong, began teaching in 2015. It is now: SGA, Black Student Union, Gay-Straight Alliance, Latinos in Action, and Future Gen pushing the ICC back on its feet.

Nicole Garrow, 12, notes that, although the ICC is slowly crawling back, it has not yet regained its previous stature. It is still in its building process. The club has only done a summit at OHS and recently a countrywide meeting. They are laying out a foundation to bring what comes next.

ICC is planning to collaborate on events to help destress students. However, in order to make everyone feel invited and be able to join the festivities, some positive changes were first needed. 

For example, the constricted title of homecoming/prom king and queen was altered to be more inclusive of people who don’t identify under a binary label. The idea was brought up and implemented by students looking to help their peers feel more comfortable on campus.

Small changes, like with homecoming and prom, will be reverberated throughout school so that even smaller clubs can improve campus. These improvements will be magnified once several clubs can collaborate on one event or activity. That is precisely what ICC has in store.

Nicole Garrow hopes that the SGA food drive and other important events such as Black History Month will serve as a connection for some of these clubs. It can be a bonding experience, designed to spread smiles.

“I think it is a great opportunity for them to be built more so that our clubs can work together throughout the school and to create sort of a network, rather than working individually,” Garrow said.

Every quarter, the Council will work together and organize events such as the Freshman Ice Cream Social, the Club Crawl, and Senior Week. Last homecoming, other clubs joined in as well. Students note that it will be critical to keep up with the monthly and quarterly meetings to be able to maintain the Inter-Club Council and make these events happen.

“The club is hopefully going to take opinions and take the purpose of a bunch of different organizations, again, making positive change and coming together once a month in order to make sure we’re all on the same page,” DeLong said.

Over the next few years, the ICC is wishing to expand to other clubs around campus. In the past, Inter-Club Council was for every single club. Now, it’s not that it won’t be for every single club one day, but their current goal is to first go back to the basics.