The Palomar Animal Rights Club is one of the few clubs on campus that is still alive and running for the 2020-2021 school year.

The campus club allows students to come together and share their love for animals. It is centered primarily around promoting veganism and living a vegan lifestyle.

Interest in veganism has hit an all-time high in 2020, surpassing the prior all-time high registered in 2019, according to a report compiled by food-centric media outlet Chef’s Pencil.

Using Google Trends data, the report analyzed the popularity of vegan search terms around the world in a variety of languages.

“To put things into perspective, veganism is now twice as popular as it was just five years ago, and it doesn’t show any sign of slowing down,” the report states. “Veganism is stronger than ever, as you can see by the number of countries whose cuisine traditionally is greatly meat and dairy-based seeing a big rise in veganism.”

The Palomar club members usually get together to promote veganism by attending film screenings, visiting animal sanctuaries, hosting vegan potlucks or dining out together at local vegan restaurants.

Social distancing guidelines that have been set due to the COVID-19 pandemic have made it difficult for the members to get together for their regular outings.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has made these usual outings difficult, so we are just sticking to Zoom meetings for now, until it is safer to meet in person,” Ashley Asadi, the club’s president said in an interview.

For the current times, they are making remote learning work.

The club also touches on all things involved with living a vegan lifestyle, including animal cruelty-free makeup and leather.

Anyone interested in learning more about the vegan lifestyle is encouraged to join the club. If interested, visit the club’s Instagram page @PalomarAnimalRights and send the club a direct message to get involved.