Is This Bad?

I am the debate club president at my school. It's a good role. I love debating, and I love sharing my knowledge of debating with my peers. I'm so happy with it.

Part of my role as the debate club president is to recruit people into the club. This is especially important at the start of the year. Naturally, you want a big club at the start. You want to get your club as exposed as possible. This bigger group of participants translates directly to a larger pool of selection for things like tournaments. Moreover, since every club dwindles down throughout the course of the year, starting with a bigger group leaves you ample space for the inevitable dwindling. The final perk of a big club is of course the funding. As a club, you can request funding. Now, the principal isn't going to fund a club that consists of you and your 3 best friends. He will, however, fund a club of 20 or 30 students. So, when you are president of a club you want to get as many people as you possibly can into your club. Not only for the reasons already listed, but also because it makes you look good as a president. People, and universities, are impressed if you manage to get a substantial group interested in your initiative.

Hopefully you now understand the reasoning behind working up a mega-club. 

Now let's talk about my dilemma:

I have about 5 friends at school, but I have an abundance of acquaintances. Thanks in part to the fact that I am very audible in the halls, and in part to the fact that I am Caucasian in a sea of Asians, a lot of people know me. Thanks to debate, I have become very talented in marketing. I can, almost literally, make the floorboards sound interesting. So, I am good at this recruitment thing. But here's the thing; It sucks to see people sitting in your club with bored faces. I hate looking out onto the people in the club and seeing them on the verge of slitting their wrists. That is part of why recruitment is slightly bad. A lot of people join the club because I tell them to. Once the recognize that it is surely not their cup of tea, they feel too obliged to me to quit. It's not fun for anyone. So, I have let recruitment be more organic. I bring up debate in conversation, but I don't so blatantly advertise my love for it anymore.

Anyways, I little while ago, I was telling my friend something about debate. I had just completed an uproarious speech in my history class. I was posing to be Clemenceau at the Paris Peace Conference. I gave a speech explaining why Germany should virtually be eradicated as a nation, but I spoke with my usual conviction and passion, and I used my excellent vocabulary. During my speech I was heckled by the boy who was posing the German government. I got the highest mark in the class on this assignment. After this achievement, As I did this, it caught the ear of the boy representing Germany, and sitting close to us. He's a nice guy. He inquired about debate and I explained it to him as best as I could. Somewhere in between I mentioned that I was president. He then boldly proclaimed that he would be attending our next meeting. His tone appeared sarcastic to me, so I didn't expect anything from him. 

Furthermore, and this would make more sense to you if you knew him, he is not the type for debate. He isn't interested in politics. He likes, and this is in his own words "babes and planes". So, I didn't expect him to show up. But then, on Wednesday, he came up to me and said "so, are you going to debate?" I said "yes." And he said "which room is it in?"

I told him. 

I still wasn't certain that he would be coming, though I was pleasantly surprised that he had remembered that Wednesday was debate day. I went to my locker to leave my school things and grab my debate things, and started making my way to debate. As I approached I was having a betting match with myself; guessing whether or not he was there. Much to my dismay, he wasn't there when I got into the room. But I was just blind. He was nestled on the couch on the corner, and stood up quickly when I walked in. I was again pleasantly surprised, even more so. It was nice of him to come, but I was well aware of what would go on for the duration of the club meeting. He would play on his phone for the entirety of the meeting and then walk me home, and politely explain that he loved the club, but that, for some strange reason, he will never be able to attend it ever again. Yes, a sad reality I face.

But I couldn't have been more wrong.

When I provided the topic for debate, I asked who wanted to debate today. A few regulars raised their hands. Kids never volunteer to debate in front of the rest of the club unless they are very experienced and very well-acquainted with debate. Then, out of the blue, he pulled one of his headphones out of his ear and gave me a look which seemed to request a repetition of the question. So, I did. Almost instinctively, he raised his hand. He wanted to debate. This had never happened before. The boy had zero debate experience, and he was aware that the people he was looking to compete against were quite a bit more versed in debate than he was. It didn't deter him. He wanted to debate.

After the preparation period of 15 minutes, he spoke. It was such a valiant effort. More importantly, he made everyone laugh more than is possible in debate. His funky, wonky style won everyone over. This led to the vice president referring to him as a "God". It was quite incredible, actually.

Afterwards, we walked home and I congratulated him on his great speech. He took it modestly. That was that. I didn't expect to see him back in debate club. He had come, he had done his part, and he had made me happy by attending the club. I expressed to him that he shouldn't feel obliged to continue, and that I would take no offense to him to showing up again. It was all fine.

The next week rolled around. I had to leave early on Tuesday, so I didn't walk with him or my best friend, Violetta. Almost ideally though, Violetta, the boy, and his best friend walked home together, instead. Violetta's younger brother and the boy's best friend are on the soccer team. So, Violetta asked the boy if he was going to come and watch the game the following day. According to Violetta, he began to say yes, but then stopped himself and said "I can't. Tomorrow's Wednesday. I have debate with Nat." This statement made Violetta laugh, and I don't blame her because it must have sounded completely absurd coming from him. After she realized that he was indeed serious, she asked "So, do you just follow Nat around? Like, do you just go wherever she does?" And to this, he replied "She makes everything fun!"

Let's be real. I'm a riot, but I'm not so incredibly cool that guys are willing to abandon things like sports to hang out with me and the nerds in the politically engaging debate club. I'm just not. I know my limitations, as much as I wish that I could say I had none. So, he was probably going, you know, because he thinks that, well, I got me a darn purdy face.

Yeah.

(He will eventually go on to describe me as "smoking hot", so this isn't just my delusional fantasy.)

That Wednesday, as we were sitting in class, Violetta asked if he was going to debate. He said that there was no point in going if I wasn't going. Well, that confirmed my suspicions. And that is what makes me upset and causes me some sort of dilemma.

Should I be happy that he is coming to debate, regardless of his motives for doing so?

This situation has happened a few times now. It happened last year and the year before that and before that. One year, a particularly brave boy came up to me during his first debate club practice and said "I''m only here for you." 

I am rarely upset by it. The way I look at it, it's just an extra member on paper and an extra hope for funding. But I feel like looking at it that way is terribly calculated. I believe that I should feel insulted or upset with the knowing that these boys are only participating in debate to have a chance with me, or something like that. Sure, one part of me wishes that their desires in debate club consisted of more than just getting closer to me, but then the other recognizes that them getting close to me is a my decision alone. They will only get as close as I let them get, so who cares what their motives are?

This guy speaks in an engaging way; he should be in debate club to exercise his skills, not to wink at me. 

Look, I'm not trying to sound pretentious. This post is not meant to be my version of "gosh, being, like, pretty is, like, so, like, difficult." Being pretty is not difficult. I get a lot of perks from it. I'm actually super stoked that my situation is the way it is. It's dank. I wrote this post simply to see if I should feel like that. I basically want to use this to see how unmoral and unethical my view is. Is it really as bad as I think it is?