Following a sudden year-long hiatus, the University of Connecticut’s Moon Club returns to operation tonight at 7:30 p.m. on the Student Union Lawn.
“Moon Club is exactly what it sounds like,” club president Angelina Lyras said. “It’s a club that provides a fun social environment for students who enjoy viewing and appreciating the moon as well as other celestial bodies. Our goal as a club is to foster a safe and loving community centered around the alternative and punk scene, but you know, we all live under the same moon, so everyone is welcome at Moon Club.”
Lyras is an animal science major in her seventh semester and is occasionally referred to as the “moon mommy” as a nod to her position in the club. She is leading this year’s iteration of Moon Club and was president last year when the club closed.
Moon Club’s reopening arrives after the club was forced to shut down out of an inability to comply with university regulations set by UConn Student Union and Event Services, according to The Daily Campus. This is primarily a result of activities related to smoking and drinking, leading to the Union requesting that Moon Club hire security.
Lyras noted that Moon Club had switched to an entirely new e-board when the university put these restrictions in place.
“It was very overwhelming,” Lyras said. “Because it was so dizzying, the hiatus was ultimately a shield that gave us enough time to revamp the club on our end.”
This closure allowed Lyras and the rest of Moon Club’s e-board to establish rules and expectations, work with student needs and plan the future of the club. It also allowed Moon Club to meet the Undergraduate Student Government’s funding deadlines for hosting meetings.
One of Lyras’s plans to keep Moon Club running this year is returning to Moon Club’s original operating style, which she referred to as ‘Old Moon Club.’
“Our members just congregate under the full moon and enjoy each other’s company,” Lyras said. “People love to share their art and other special interests and hobbies with each other. And that’s again, what I mentioned earlier, how we’re celebrating with the theme of the full moon.”
Lyras plans to center each Moon Club meeting around the specific full moon happening that month, with October being the month of the Hunter’s Moon.
“Since this is our first meeting back after our hiatus, we will be celebrating it as a ‘welcome back meeting,’” Lyras said. “Where all of our members will just have a chance to, you know, fit in with the club and the e-board and other members, and just hang out.”
Lyras stressed that this meeting of the Moon Club is a sober event, but she said she hopes this will allow for new members to become better acclimated to Moon Club in what she believes to be a more welcoming environment.
“We’re going to have some people doing tarot cards there, which is awesome, because that is very much a fun thing to do under the full moon,” Lyras said. She also noted there will be a tote bag giveaway. “We have some leftover merch that we had when we got samples, that we wanted to give back out to our members.”
Another change for this meeting of Moon Club is that it will not include live music, which Moon Club’s secretary Joseph Kosover explained is truer to Moon Club’s original structure.
“In the past, Moon Club originally functioned as kind of the meeting on Monday would,” Kosover, a seventh-semester student majoring in speech, languages and hearing sciences, said. “Where there’s no music concerts. At some point, more recently it became a music scene thing, where there would be bands every time. And as of before our hiatus, our last show had bands and from then on, we’re just straight up not allowed to have [live] music.”
Lyras noted that while she enjoyed the previous era of Moon Club, it wasn’t feasible under university rules and regulations. However, she noted that future live music is possible, but the club is currently taking a break.
“I think, apart from the drinking, the culture is very much the same,” Lyras said. “At the end of the day, Moon Club is a community of, you know, alternative and punk rockers who are just there to hang out and enjoy each other’s company. Under the full moon, of course.”
Lyras also expanded on some of the changes she’s looking forward to within Moon Club, one being the organization’s relocation to the Student Union Lawn.
“I think it’s a lot more accessible to most of our members, instead of the Great Lawn where we used to be at,” Lyras said. “The Student Union is right there so people will have access to garbage cans and food and water and everything like that, so they don’t have to walk as far, which is really nice.”
Despite the changes Moon Club has gone through, Lyras noted that Moon Club will still remain a welcoming communal space for people who love the moon.
“I’m very excited,” Lyras said. “It’s been a very difficult year getting back up, so we’re all very happy to be back. And like I mentioned earlier, we’re extremely grateful to have such a loving and supporting community, especially during the hiatus.”
Moon Club meets every night of the full moon, weather permitting. Further updates surrounding Moon Club can be found on the organization’s Instagram account.