“We are looking to teach people how to program in a way that benefits the community while also collaborating with others,” said senior Eric Schnelker, one of the co-presidents of the club. “When most people think of hacking, they are thinking of malicious hacking such as hacking the government. Our main objective is to help people learn about accomplishing goals in computer science.”
Another objective of the club is to send students to Hack-A-Thons, conventions where people work in groups to try to solve a challenge that helps contribute to the world.
“This past May we took a group of six people to Chicago and we created a website that helps veterans get back on their feet after they come back from war,” said Schnelker.
Unlike other clubs around SLUH, the Hack Club is backed by a professional company in California that is helping to guide them through this. The company has helped form 500 clubs across the country this year, and plans to continue spreading computer science education around the United States.
Club moderator Dan See is trying to get students interested in creativity, problem solving, and collaboration of programming and web design.
Overall, this new club is trying to spread ways of helping society through computer science, and creating a collaborative community of helpful hackers at SLUH.