Clubs are always trying to find innovative and engaging ideas for promoting themselves. With that goal in mind, they lean towards social media. Niles West’s Debate team, for example, has created an Instagram trend this fall called “Finding Avinn” which consists of finding and taking a picture of sophomore debater Avinn Shrestha.

Mandal said that since Shrestha was the only club member not in the Honors Debate class, the debaters decided to create a competition to see who could find him first before the end of the day. The person who finds him first and sends a picture to the Debate Instagram gets photo credits. Any former or present members of Debate can participate. The trend has also connected the team with other debaters in the country on social media and all together brings a smile to the debate community.

The photos started when junior, social media manager and co-captain of debate Lorelai Mandal suggested that they use their platform to connect with more students.

“Before ‘Finding Avinn’, we would mainly post statistics on the rounds we won and lost [on Instagram]. But this year we’ve done something different where we want to have more inside jokes and have people know more about the team when they look at us. So that when people think of debate they don’t see a really broad club but actually see the people in it,” Mandal said.

The man himself says that he gets a kick out of the whole thing and thinks it’s helping Niles West’s debate team recruit new members.

“Finding Avinn is really fun for me and the team because it’s kind of like a game for all of us and helps create a more positive image for debate. I think that it’s going to increase membership for debate because more people use social media so they’re more likely to hear about debate and see how community-oriented it is,” Shrestha said.

Sponsor and debate teacher Nicholas Jennings thinks that finding Avinn will not only set debate apart but also bring the members closer together.

“We were looking to form a kind of engagement with our Instagram that was different than what other clubs were doing, so we came up with the idea of shouting out one of our debaters but also creating an interesting idea.  The goal of finding Avinn was to bring the whole team together but also have fun doing it. Finding Avinn promotes the idea that debaters are just people who go to tournaments but that we can also be people who hang out with one another,” Jennings said.