Moon Club is relatively new at UConn. Students across years, majors, and interests gather on the Great Lawn to celebrate each full moon. It’s known for Instagram memes and accusations of being a cult, but for students it seems to be about community — and lunacy.

At November’s Blood Moon meeting, on the eve of the 2022 midterm elections, I meet UConn Joker; someone playing the accordion; a person dressed as Jesus; a guy with a decorated skull staff; and students chanting, dancing in circles, and doing cartwheels. “I find a strong sense of kinship with the moon and, you know, it’s just a really, really cool celestial object,” Vladimir Klyukin ’26 (ACES), known here as “Staff Guy,” told me.

Recent transfer students Amethyst Van Antwerp ’25 (ED, CLAS), Riley Smith ’25 (CLAS), Tyler Conroy ’24 (CLAS), and Hannah Renzoni ’26 (CAHNR) say they came out of curiosity, but seem like converts. “You can just be comfortable here, there’s no judgment,” says Smith.

“Moon Club just allows you to meet some really out-of-the-box people that you would never imagine meeting in everyday life,” Sophia Rogers ’24 (NUR) tells me. “I’ve witnessed a bagpipe, a mandolin, people playing drums ... it’s just fun to meet a ton of people.”

Sociology master’s student and club VP and Instagram manager Nicola Wilk ’22 (CLAS), aka “Moon Mommy,” says the club started small, but “blew up” in COVID 2020. “It was one of the only clubs on campus that got to meet in person, a lot of people were able to join and just, like, appreciate the moon from a safe distance, staring at it.”

The question remains: Is it a cult? Moon Mommy says no, but others remain skeptical.

“I don’t think it’s organized enough to be one, but it’s basically one. It’s beginning, it could be one. It has potential,” says Conroy.