COLIN PERRY
Special to The Leader
One of the newest clubs on campus is aiming for the stars as it moves forward — literally.
Fredonia’s Astronomy Club was established this semester by sophomore geology major Dana Reinstein. As its first president, her inspiration to create the club was as simple as filling a void.
“I know a lot of people are really interested in space and things like that, and I saw that the school didn’t have [a club] so I decided to start one,” Reinstein said.
According to her, there have been other attempts to get an astronomy club off the ground for many years, but none of them materialized until now.
From the beginning, the club has been designed to be as inclusive as possible. Instead of just being comprised of science majors, members and e-board representatives alike come from a diverse range of backgrounds. For example, Joshua Bouck, sophomore history and social studies adolescence education dual major, currently serves as the club’s first treasurer.
Bouck shares Reinstein’s feelings on student interest. According to him, space and the stars are topics that transcend the boundaries of what students are normally fascinated by.
“I think everyone is [interested in space] at least a little,” Bouck said. “I think it’s because there’s so much unknown. The more you realize about space, the more you realize is unknown.”
Despite its far-reaching focus, Astronomy Club has grown slowly, with meetings that, according to Reinstein, usually consist of “around ten people.”
But the club is hoping that will change as more of its activities, many of which have been met with complications, come to fruition. For example, stargazing — and other events centered on hands-on learning — have been cancelled due to the harsh winter and subsequent rain showers as temperatures rise.
Other long-standing goals of Astronomy Club are to utilize the planetarium in Jewett Hall and the observatory in the Science Center. While progress has been made on the former, one big roadblock has come up in pursuing the latter: it’s not finished.
“We were really hoping to do that this semester, but the Science Center in general wasn’t built on time, so there’s not a telescope in it,” Bouck said. “It’s the last thing they’re going to do to it, and there are still lecture halls that aren’t done in it.”
Astronomy Club has figured out other ways to engage the campus, however. In keeping with its welcoming philosophy, its first event, “Aliens???,” asked a question some may consider unscientific: “Do aliens exist?” Reinstein claims it’s a topic many students are interested in, and that there is, in fact, more basis for the topic than people typically realize.
“We’re not going to be talking about Hollywood aliens. We’re talking about the possibility of microbial life or real, very small aliens,” Reinstein said prior to the event. “I think it’s very likely that they exist. The universe is huge — there could be anything out there.”
Bouck agreed without hesitation.
“It makes sense that if the universe is endless, there’s not just life on Earth,” he said. “The club’s about asking the bigger questions, and that’s a big question.”
Reinstein hopes that events like “Aliens???” will get more people involved with Astronomy Club, particularly if they’re interested in space and the cosmos already. But even more, she hopes to help educate people as the club grows.
“[Our goal is] to help people who have an interest but don’t know much, to help them learn, to do events like stargazing or planetariums,” she said. “People who already know a lot can learn more, too, because there’s always more to learn.”