The Taiwanese Student Association (TSA) has been up and running since the beginning of the 2023-2024 school year, and their positive influence on the Wilcox community continues to grow. Ran by co-presidents and club founders Margaret (Maggie) Wu and Michelle Wu, TSA has held both fun general meetings and exciting school-wide events in their mission to spread appreciation for Taiwanese culture within the Wilcox community. 

Maggie explains her initial motivation to found TSA: “When I was a freshman, I immediately noticed how Wilcox didn’t have any Taiwanese club.” When Maggie met Michelle in their freshman year, they began discussing making their ideas a reality. “Michelle and I… would talk about [starting a Taiwanese club] during P.E.,” Maggie describes. After drafting their club constitution and getting TSA approved by the Associated Student Body (ASB), Maggie and Michelle hosted their first meeting at the start of their sophomore year. As they tackled their first few months as a club, Maggie and Michelle learned the process of being presidents as they went. Maggie notes how they established methods of organization that continue to ease the process of running TSA meetings: “We created a plan for the whole year about what meeting themes we wanted to do, ideas for meetings, and other details.”

A typical TSA general meeting is always lively, they can have anywhere from 40 to 60 attendees packed into Ms. Slate’s classroom. After giving students around ten minutes to get lunch, Maggie and Michelle announce the beginning of the meeting together. They start off with an informational slideshow discussing a certain aspect of Taiwanese culture. TSA establishes a special theme for every meeting, some examples being Taiwanese school life, fruits, holidays, etc. After presenting, the officers usually hold a Blooket quiz game, where students compete to see who can correctly answer the most questions surrounding the meeting’s subject. The winner of the Blooket wins a special snack as a prize. One time, a student won a large pack of pineapple cakes for winning the game!

TSA officers draw in their attendees with the promise of yummy Taiwanese snacks such as jelly cups and White Rabbit candies. Maggie also adds how TSA likes to host an occasional bigger event, “We’ve made Taiwanese shaved ice for attendees during general meetings and that always draws a lot of attention… After that, these people continue coming to future meetings.” Although some students initially come for the snacks, many will continue attending TSA meetings to enjoy the club’s monthly activities. 

TSA has even brought together countless Wilcox multicultural clubs to host a special event: the multicultural lunch market. “At the same time Michelle and I were in P.E. together, we talked about doing something similar to a Taiwanese night market,” explains Maggie. The co-presidents created a proposal for the event that they presented to Ms. Luzon and other members of the Wilcox administration. Their plan was to host an event where several multicultural clubs could host booths around the quad offering their ethnic foods. Executing the event required a lot of communication and proactivity from TSA’s co-presidents. Maggie describes countless meetings with Ms. Luzon, a lot of emails sent out to multicultural clubs, and even collaboration with ASB and custodial staff. Their hard work finally paid off in May 2025, as students excitedly flocked to different cultural booths during lunch to try all different kinds of ethnic food. The market was such a success that Maggie mentions TSA’s intention to keep the event up and running: “We’re planning on hosting the lunch market again this year. We really want it to become an annual thing at Wilcox.”

Some of TSA’s other plans for the future include a continuation of their themed monthly meetings, and hopefully attracting more underclassmen to join the club. Maggie also notes that “Lunar New Year is coming up, so we will definitely be hosting a meeting for that. We might even do something exciting and different for this meeting.” She invites any and all students to join TSA in their fun celebrations of Taiwanese culture: “We’d love to have more students—especially underclassmen—come to our meetings. After all, the more the merrier!”