by Lindsay Cox
After a year in the making, Queens club is finally here! President Mikyla Steed came up with the idea for her club with her roommates while living at Parkland Pointe. They noticed that there weren’t a lot of girls there and felt like something needed to be done about it. Thus, a club for female bonding was born. If you also feel like all that you are doing is going from school to home but want to change that, Steed encourages you to attend one of the Queens club meetings.
The first step for Steed was putting up posters to advertise for the group. Asia Jointer, a Student Life worker and founding member of the club, informed Steed that the posters needed to be approved by Student Life. At the time there was something wrong with the poster, but Jointer was really interested in the club and told Steed that, “I could work with you to get this flyer approved, because I feel like it would really be a good thing for this college and for girls to have. If you need help with anything else, then I am willing to help.”
“We want this to be like a real sisterhood where we still keep in contact after we are gone,”
Jointer is trying to start an organization back home, so this is great experience for her to learn what to do and how to get things done for her organization. The girls also want to mentor other members to prepare them to take over the club once they move to the next stage of their academic career. “We want this to be like a real sisterhood where we still keep in contact after we are gone,” Steed said. She also talked about the mission statement for the club stating that it’s her goal for the members to bond like sisters. “Like a big sister, we want to be a role model, to help the members get through things and different points of life like getting through college,” Jointer added.
Both girls had older sisters but felt like they didn’t really have anyone that understood what they were going through. By bridging this gap, they feel like they will be able to help other girls feel more confident moving into adulthood. Like Steed, Jointer was also going class, then returning home after class. She never even came to the U-Wing. Then she started to realize that she needed to make the most of her time at Parkland. “This is my freshman experience and I have nothing to show for it. I thought, ‘maybe if I start working on campus, it will force me to meet new people and to get involved.’ Through that, meeting all the amazing people that I have met have forced me to join iconnect,” Jointer said. “Student Life wants me to be senator for student government; they got me into a lot of different stuff. Just being around everyone is makes you want to be a better person.”
Steed and Jointer are in the process of trying to organize a fundraiser to help pay for their club’s bonding trip to Atlanta, Georgia. The goal of the trip is to listen to motivational speaker Sarah Jakes Roberts. Steed plans on doing more events to recruit girls. Both leaders of the club are eager to leave a legacy at Parkland. Last year, the two talked about starting it and there were a lot of obstacles that they had to overcome, but now they are finally a recognized club.
Before wrapping up, Steed and Jointer told the Prospectus that, “This club is for every type, every color, race, ethnicity, whatever religion. We want people to feel comfortable coming in. This is a judgement free zone. We want them to feel comfortable talking to us. Many people are so different, and you think that you wouldn’t have anything in common, but at the end of the day we are all human and have more in common than you think. We go through the same things with guys, religion, our bodies, so we can all talk on an equal playing field and learn from each other.”
