In my high school, every senior was required to give a speech, on a topic of their choice, in front of the entire upper school. Granted, my high school was quite small—only a bit over 100 kids per grade—but after four years of four speeches per week, most of them have blended together and been forgotten. There are some I can remember: ones that were especially funny, sad, or informative. One speech, however, I and many of my classmates recollect years later, because of how tone deaf it was. My sophomore year, a white girl took the stage to talk about her touching experience on a mission trip to Africa. She spoke about how she could just feel the pain and suffering of those around her, because she was an empath. Despite the colonialist nature of these trips, the ‘empath’ description was what stuck in most people's heads.

The truth was, many people went on such ‘mission’ trips—although most, unconnected to a church, were simply called service trips. Parents would pay upwards of a thousand dollars to send their children to Africa, South America, or the Caribbean for a few weeks in the summer, and there, the teenagers would help build infrastructure and play with local kids. In recent years, this practice has become known as ‘voluntourism’ and has been recognized as a form of white-saviorism that is actually damaging to the local communities and economies they claim to help. That doesn’t matter though, because the people going on these trips aren’t really doing it to help; they’re going to feel good about themselves in an exciting new place, and—most importantly—put it on their college applications.

You might be thinking, “I don’t know anyone who’s done this,” but you would be wrong. If you know anyone in the Lumsden Club, you’ve met a voluntourist.

The Lumsden Club was founded in 2001, its esteemed alumni including Kate Middleton, the Princess of Wales. It is a highly selective club, known to only accept around ten new members each year. The rumor is that applicants are, or at least for a time were, required to submit copies of their parents’ bank statements—lest they accidentally accept someone not in the highest tier of the upper class. The club is listed as a charity, but in 2021-2023, the club failed to submit their financial records on time, with each submission a year late. Additionally, the charity record shows that in 2024, the Lumsden Club donated less than £5,000 to Fife Women’s Aid, yet they spent £50,000. 

Despite their apparent commitment to financial exclusivity, the club claims their goal is “The promotion of opportunity, equality and diversity through women.” Two years ago, the club planned a trip to Poland to volunteer aid for Ukraine. However, upon arrival, the charity fell through, and the reading week was spent as a group trip in Poland.

The Lumsden Club is a classic example of voluntourism. It is an exclusive society, accessible only to the richest of the rich, where its members pay to put ‘charitable work’ on their CVs. Their calls for donations come off as tone deaf, considering they fail to publish receipts that prove that these donations go towards anything more than a reading week spent with their friends. St Andrews is full of elitist societies, but at least the majority don’t pretend to be a charity for the purposes of ego and CV boosting.

The root of the issue is not that Lumsden is an elitist club, as St Andrews is no stranger to those. On any given night out, you’re likely to find a group of guys wearing striped ties to indicate their secret society. Emojis, such as beavers, in Instagram bios serve as winks to those in the know that this person belongs to a secret society. Perhaps shockingly, I have nothing against secret societies (apart from the interesting, surely coincidental connection between the men in them and various allegations). I even have friends in secret societies. If you want to flaunt your wealth, hang out with posh people, go on expensive trips, and be a part of a club made up of the one percent, you picked the right school. My issue with the Lumsden Club is that they have the audacity to call themselves a charity. Sure, secret and non-secret societies can give you a leg up by helping you make connections, but the Lumsden Club is clearly a façade for these girls to put ‘charity’ on their CVs.