The Student Senate discussed the possibility of using a new virtual platform for Club Day during its meeting on Oct. 20. Because the pandemic has forced many events to hold online meetings and virtual conferences, Mark Sheppard, CAEB president and Naomi Dasari, student representative, proposed a better outlet for the clubs to meet using a virtual space called Booth Central.

“Booth Central is a service for people and organizations to host events online,” Dasari said. “There can be a livestream of a whole group video and there are individual vendor booths set up for the audience to browse the gallery and privately message and video call the booth.”

Brett Sawyer, ASB advisor, said that it’s way more convenient to have clubs set up on Booth Central than Zoom, where students have to put in more work to create a virtual event.

“It’s $49 a month for unlimited virtual events,” Sawyer said. “The day that you are live it will be an additional $15 per booth. Clubs won’t be charged for this; the bill will be sent to CAEB or the Senate.”

Shepphard said that it will be the closest that clubs can get to having their own booths and hosting a virtual club day. None of the clubs objected to the idea.

According to Shepphard, there are 15 official American River College clubs. These include Research Club, Ping-Pong Club, Pride & Stem Club and Future Educators Club.

“These are the clubs that have completed the orientation process and have done all the necessary paperwork to be labeled as an official club,” Shepphard said.

Sawyer said that official clubs now get to reap benefits from CAEB each time a club attends one of the meetings.

“Earning points for your club converts into money for the club,” said Sawyer. “The more points you earn from attending, the more money the club can earn for itself.”

Aesha Abduljabbar, CAEB vice president, announced the Self Care project bill for the Student Senate to vote on during the meeting.

“It was created to fund virtual Zumba and yoga classes for students,” Abduljabbar said. “The money will be used to pay instructors to host these online.”

Shepphard added that the money would also be used to pay for live music events and vendors. The Student Senate voted to pass the bill; CAEB will be allocating $2,500 to go towards the Self Care Student Engagement project bill.

Silvia Garcia, a representative from the Engineering Club, announced that the club was granted $600 for its hydroponics system.

“It’s a simple hydroponics 5-gallon bucket where you can grow things indoor and outdoor,” Garcia said. “It’s something that students can get hands-on technical with.”

In other announcements, Abduljabbar said that she had recently become the student ambassador for CalFresh.

“If you know anyone dealing with food insecurity, you can give them my contact information so I can help them get with the CalFresh program,” Abduljabbar said.

The next meeting is scheduled for Nov. 3,  at 10:30 a.m. via Zoom. Those that are late or can’t make the time, can always view the recording of the meeting at www.asb-arc.org.