The Bad Idea Society is ready to take on any ideological quandaries that come its way.
The club started up this semester to discuss anything and everything. The club founder, English and business senior Jamie Leung, said she got the idea for it in a surprising way.
“I came up with the idea over summer, after I watched ‘Fight Club,’ which is a very bad example of a club,” Leung said. “But I loved the energy and thought maybe we could channel the energy in discussion.”
The 10 members focus on a very large range of topics, from the personal to the abstract. One of their more recent discussions involved human trafficking, and whether artificial inteligence could be an alternative for it. One of their more personal discussions was about their obstacles and setbacks.
“In the first meeting, we talked about obstacles that kept us from achieving our best,” Leung said. “A lot of the answers are ourselves.”
While the club does try to stay away from topics that are too extreme, the concept is that there’s some good in every idea. Members try to find interesting or productive angles in each idea they discuss.
Computer science junior Trevor Serpas said he really enjoyed the discussions, especially the way they are all able to expand upon and think more deeply about each topic.
“It’s a good way to discuss creative prompts or generally any kind of idea,” Serpas said. “It’s just a group of people who are friends with you, that you can discuss.”
The club does a weekly prompt, where the members write down their responses to it, then mix them up and have people take turns reading them aloud. This way, nobody feels any hesitation about writing honestly on the chosen subject. So far, they haven’t had any major conflicts during discussions.
One member, Lou Pham, a elec eng junior, said that the way they read each other’s answers really help reduce any potential drama.
“The format’s pretty interesting,” Pham said. “It’s all anonymous so you can ask anything, you’re not worried about ‘[people saying] Hey, you said this, you said that.’ ”
Right now, the club isn’t very well known. It’s mainly just a group of friends who have known each other for a while and meet up every Thursday in the Student Union. Leung does hope to expand, as one of the club’s goals is to create relationships across majors.
“One of my friends said it was hard to find a community for so many different types of people and this club doesn’t really solve that problem but it takes an aim towards breaking down barriers and networking throughout different majors,” Leung said.
Leung said while she came up with the idea because of “Fight Club,” she chose the club’s name as almost a joke.
“It’s kind of ironic because I don’t believe in bad ideas,” Leung said. “I do believe in bad ideas but I do believe that they’re not completely bad, so it’s just a tongue-in cheek way of saying it.”