The Harry Potter club?
Yes, the Harry Potter Club.

Why?

You, or someone you know, has read the books. This person may wish to find others who have read the books, for a variety of reasons. These reasons include, but are not limited to: discussion, event-going, theory exchanging, and sanity assuring reasons. Unfortunately, finding other fans, may be more of a problem than it would seem, considering the books are a world-wide phenomena. Older fans of the books, especially, may face disinterest or even ridicule from the non-fans around them. The Harry Potter Club provides a sort of haven for fans of the books in the Grand Valley State University community and surrounding areas.

So what does a Harry Potter club do?

Meetings take place at 7:00 pm on Thursday, in the Kirkhof Center (just in case you haven't caught on already!), during the Fall and Winter semesters. During meetings we do a variety of activities that vary from week to week. Our most recent addition is a discussion series, about previously determined subjects, led by alternating group members. Topics have included Founders, Horcruxes, Houses, Mythology in the books, comparing HP to classic literature and Death in the Wizarding World. We also have game meetings playing both HP related games like trivia, Gnome Toss, or Pictionary and non-HP games such as Cranium. Other activities can include event-planning, wand-making, the Trading Card game or just having fun. Of course, we're also open to any ideas or suggestions and always trying new things.

We also hold a Yule Ball, a speaker, and Halloween Party, open to both members and non. We have also had guest speakers from other universities come and speak with the club in the most recent years. We've even brainstormed ways to get J.K. Rowling to come and speak to us about her own series, but we all know how unlikely that may be! 

History

The Harry Potter Club of GVSU was started in September of 2003 by Meghan when she was a freshman at GVSU and enrolled in Honors College. Meghan had started the club with the hopes of finding people to play the Harry Potter Trading Card Game. While she's only had limited success in that area, the Harry Potter Club has exceeded everyone's expectations.

The club's most important accomplishment in its first year was the Yule Ball in December. A Costume Contest, Raffle, a Defense Against the Dark Arts Maze, Tarot Reading, Make Your Own Wand and/or Snitch are only some of the activities that were held that night. This event had more than one-hundred attendees and earned some press from a local newspaper and the HPANA website, a source for news relating to Harry Potter.
Our second year included another sucessful Yule Ball, and Steve Vander Ark of the Harry Potter Lexicon as a speaker.

The Harry Potter Club, in past years and especially last year, worked together with other notable clubs and organizations on campus in order to put together this amazing event of the Yule Ball. We had members of the Swing Club attend and represent their club as they taught Harry Potter fans how to swing. We also had members of The Chemistry Club provide interesting and entertaining experiments for those interested in playing with dangerous potions. We even organized a small band that consisted only of members of Grand Valley's Laker Marching Band (The Pride of the Midwest!) that provided musical enjoyment in the form of the Harry Potter theme songs plus other Christmas-related music. We are more than open to having other clubs aide us in putting on our annual Yule Ball. If you are a member of another club and think that that club can assist us in any way in making our festivities more welcome to other members, don't hesitate to let us know on the forum (the link is below!). 

Our fourth year promises to be just as exciting!

For more information on the Club or any of its members, look around the website or visit the Forum!

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