UWG Students launch Star Wars Club just in time for “May the 4th Be With You”

Star Wars Club prepares to end the semester by celebrating on the official ‘Star Wars’ Day on May 4, a tradition upheld by fans since 1977.

The club held their first meeting on March 31 but, despite the late creation, the membership peaks at around 20 to 25 students.

“We went to dinner one night and thought: we should make a club together,” says Coy Pruett, the club’s secretary and one of the five founders. “What do we all have in common? Star Wars.”

Pruett founded the club with fellow UWG students Zoe Harris, Rae Harris, Kelli Breed and Kai Morgan. To officiate their first meeting day and solidify their extracurricular, they hosted Jameelah McMillian, the voice actor of Halle Burtoni and other characters in the animated “Star Wars: Clone Wars.”

“It was very interesting to get her professional background and what she went through to get where she is,” says Pruett. “Right now, we are just trying to get people to join so that later we can do bigger things like [inviting more guests to talk].”

The club plans to meet on April 28 and May 4 with plans for a possible summer meeting and more activities in the coming semester.

“It’s fun just being able to get out of reality by imagining heroes and stuff, which is why people love superhero movies because they don’t have to imagine the reality that they’re in,” says Pruett. “I like Star Wars because there’s so many abnormal people in ‘Star Wars’. You can go to a totally different planet and meet someone who’s a completely different species or you can pick up a blaster and become a bounty hunter.”

Fans of the series keep the worlds alive not just through enjoying the canon movies, T.V. series and games but also by creating their own storylines and inserting themselves into the galaxy far, far away.

Even if someone knows nothing about the cosmic space epics, anyone is welcome to drop by the club just to make connections and hang out.

“We have people that don’t even know ‘Star Wars’ and they show up,” says Pruett. “It’s pretty funny but they keep coming back. Maybe we can convince them to watch [Star Wars] eventually but I don’t know.”

Even so, with so many video games and films it’s possible that there’s a way for anyone to appreciate the cultural phenomena.

From the “LEGO Star Wars” video games to the very popular Disney Plus show “The Mandalorian” following a space bounty hunter, the “Star Wars” community flourishes and continues to grow. Fans can be drawn to the intergalactic odysseys through the stories and characters.

Pruett’s favorite character is Kylo Ren. However, the general “Star Wars” community is torn on the acceptance of the most recent trilogy featuring Rei, a female jedi as the main protagonist. Still, no matter what series or gateway into the franchise, fans find ways to keep their appreciation for the series alive and relate to characters in any series.

No matter the community wars over favorite characters and their character arcs, the community can all agree to dislike one character in particular who has become a universal meme and received universal pushback.

“We don’t talk about Jar Jar Binks,” says Pruett. “That’s a controversy we can’t get into.”