Begin with a dark room, then fill it with loud music and add a crowd of students armed with glowsticks — at many American universities, this volatile mixture might be considered a recipe for arrest. For one group of Cornell students, though, these elements are merely the necessary ingredients for the weekly meeting of the Glowsticking Club.

During the group’s weekly meetings, according to club president Kevin Cao ’10, “[We] provide a good place for teaching and practicing glowsticking.”

Although many people incorrectly assume that the glowsticking is simply dancing with glowsticks, Cao explained that this is a common misconception.

“[To say that] we are dancing with glowsticks more often than not just confuses people, so usually it’s easiest to show [people] with videos or pictures.”

In order to avoid misunderstandings about the club and the nature of their activities, Cao said, “We generally don’t like putting up posters or chalking the sidewalks because that usually leads to more misunderstanding than not.”

“We mostly rely on the shows we do,” Cao explained.

Members of the Glowsticking Club have performed at a number of evening events, including Cornell Night, the dance series, China Night, Kaleidoscope and Illuminations. According to Cao, the Cornell Glowsticking Club doesn’t just rely on evening shows for recruitment and advertising, but also for the opportunity to perform.

“Because one of the main tenants of glowsticking is that there is no competing we are strictly against any form of competition. There’s no battling.”

Another aspect of Cornell’s Glowsticking Club that Cao emphasized was the fact that — unlike at raves and parties where dancing with glowsticks is associated with substance use — the members of Cornell’s club are substance-free.

Cao cited the club’s substance-free stance as a necessity given the complexity of glowsticking.

“We’re completely substance free … which is a legitimate concern because of raving, drugs, ecstasy … but with what we do if you’re on something and you’re trying to glowstick like we do you’re likely to get hurt very badly.”

Cao, like some of the club’s other experienced members, began glowsticking before college. Upon coming to Cornell he met some other experience glowstickers and began to consider the possibility of forming a club.

“The [glowsticking club] officers have known each other since freshman year when we hung out and practiced,” Cao said, “though it wasn’t an officially recognized club until second semester last year.”

Cao, along with the club’s other three co-founders — Joe Lu ’10, Crystal Tang ’10 and David Shin ’10 — established the club both with the intention of finding a place to practice regularly and also with the goal of being able to teach other students how to glowstick.

“You can come to our meetings and we’re willing to teach anyone,” said Cao.

He continued to explain the range of skill levels and abilities Cornell’s club welcomes: “Although obviously for the officers and some of the other people it’s just practice,” Cao said, “for the new people it’s learning how to glowstick.” RLD