Clubs play an important role in the Riordan community. They unite people in subjects outside the academic curriculum that they would have never met or would have been able to connect with. Within this broader array of clubs, there are also several cultural clubs.

The first appearance of cultural clubs at Riordan are the Black Student Club and Latino Club in the 1974 Lance yearbook.
“It benefits the school because it benefits diversity and embraces who they are an represents what the real world is and what they will end up doing with it,” Maryann Datoc said.
This school year marks a high point in the number of cultural clubs at Riordan. Within this flurry of clubs are Latinos Unidos, Irish Heritage Club, Jewish Heritage Club, Pasifika (Polynesian Club), Philippine American Coalition (PAC), Mediterranean Heritage Club, and Asian Student Alliance (ASA).
In general, these arrangements of cultural clubs unite the school’s different cultures and identities into an organized collective for the benefit of them and others around them. Just because these clubs are separate from each other does not limit their participation with each other within the Riordan community.
Riordan Cultural clubs have been around for decades. Ever since the early years, these clubs have expanded to encompass more and more of the student body. One of the key roles of those clubs’ messages to the school community is to spread awareness of their heritage through activities and food.
Kingston Thouchalanh ’27 stated, “Activities such as this [the potluck] allow us to express our culture through fun activities, today we are experiencing it through different types of food.”
Spanish teacher and club adviser Armando Castillo also supports the significance of these activities by stating, “It’s important to enrich the student body by these activities.”

Members of the ASA sold boba tea at the Halloween carnival.
Recently, several clubs hosted an after- school potluck for each club to bring their respective foods together for the Riordan community. During the potluck, several games and activities were played before food was offered. The atmosphere reflected the abundance of different heritage foods that were all present at the potluck.
The future of Riordan’s cultural clubs is a flurry of activity and expansion. Castillo, a moderator for the Jewish and Latino Heritage clubs, said, “For the future, I hope they expand and clubs are created for kids that don’t fit into any of those categories.”
Paul Ha ’25, member of the ASA club, said, “It is a good way for different people to connect.”
All in all, cultural clubs act as the backbone of the diverse population at Riordan to be able to express themselves through activities, games, and foods that enlighten the student body about the world around them and will reflect the world that they will grow up in.