Student Government Recognizes 4 New Clubs for 22/23

POS(T)RUTH, Debate Club, Toastmasters, Orators and Comedians Club (TOCC), and PHI Club are the four new clubs among 30 clubs at AUBG. 

The members of three of the new clubs discuss what they are promising to AUBG students, and how they are dealing with certain challenges that come with being a newly-established club. 

POS(T)RUTH

Kalina, the vice president of the club, said that the name POS(T)RUTH combines Political Science and the concept of presenting the truth, which is the main agenda of the club. 

“It is a very big project in our heads, but for now we are starting small,” Kalina said. 

The club will be writing articles about social issues, economic analyses, and historical backgrounds of different countries. “We will be focusing on everything that is not the US or the West, generally speaking,” Kalina added. 

Fady, who is a member of POS(T)RUTH, said: “We want to approach this from multiple perspectives.” He further explained that the club is striving to find open-minded and diverse people, who are willing to talk about various important social issues. 

The club currently has 20 members. “The majority of our members are not from Bulgaria, so they are able to elaborate on how different systems work,” Kalina said. 

Fady and Kalina discussed how they intend to dive deeper into a wide variety of topics. “On a surface level, it may seem like we are doing JMC or POS-related activities, but we want to make this our own. We just found what other clubs were lacking and wanted to fill that void," Kalina said.  

Like every other club, POS(T)RUTH has also faced some challenges. “Funding is honestly not a big issue for us,” Kalina said. “We have this massive idea that we are gradually adding up to. We are eager to find tangible ways to make this a reality. This can be challenging at times,” Kalina added. 

“We want to make complex things interesting,” Kalina said. She discussed the importance of talking about political and social situations in order to genuinely understand them.

The club strives to go beyond AUBG too. “Our president has this amazing idea to collaborate with social activism in Blagoevgrad and around the country. We want to visit high schools, hold presentations and workshops,” Kalina said. 

Kalina thinks that young people should be educated and informed about the importance of voting, political issues, and their consequences.

Debate Club

Ani Kovacheva, the president of the Debate Club, is a freshman from Bulgaria. She has been in competitive debating for about two years now. “The main objective of the Debate Club is to gather people who are enthusiastic about debating, about improving their skills and learning more,” Ani said. 

She said that debating is a very educational activity, which gives you opportunities to expand your horizon in a very engaging way.  

Gabriela Stefanova, who is the vice-president of the club, said, “We are planning to organize three events in the following semester: AUBG insider – a competition which will be open to everyone at AUBG to participate in; then we want to organize AUBG Debate Open which is an international competition online; and debate academy for AUBG students as well as high school students who are interested in debating.”

“We want to hold some workshops on topics such as public speaking and generally, how to present better,” Gabriela added.

The members of the club said they were impressed with the Freshmen: “We owe a lot to new students. We have a great team, great people,” Gabriela said. 

When the Debate Club first applied for club recognition, they had an initial list of 26 people, but after the first open meeting, more than 30 students have shown interest. 

“Currently, we are holding an application process for people we have not managed to reach until now,” Gabriela added.

Anton Perederii, the treasurer of the Debate Club, talked about the difficulties that the club faces. “We have to think about finding sponsors, managing and rationing the budget, which is pretty limited.” 

“First we need the reputation and then we will hopefully get more funding and support,” he added.

Competitive, engaging, and open - Ani, Gabriella, and Anton describe the Debate Club in these three adjectives. 

PHI Club

The president of the PHI Club, Suela Carkaxhija, talked about the name of the club.“We chose the name with a powerful connotation. It means to obtain balance, to have the golden ratio between things.” Suela said that the club aims to promote having a balance between having fun activities on campus and studying.

“Our main objective is to build a network and create friendly and open discussions,” she said.

PHI Club is planning to be active this semester. “We are planning to do three ‘CofPHIs’, which is an event where any AUBG student or faculty member can participate and share their opinions,” Suela said. Each ‘CofPHI’ event will have a specific topic and the attendants will be able to have interesting and thought-provoking discussions. 

At the moment, the club has 16 members. Suela said that reaching students has been tricky. “We are aware that there are many students who have yet to find out about our club, so we are actively working on building a connection with the audience.”

Yet, Suela feels positive about the future of the club: “I see more people knowing about us and more people willing to speak about social issues.”

Suela described the members of the club as diverse and the club itself as ‘critical and friendly.’