Am i too nice to lead??

hey all. im a new president of a club at my college for eastern psychology/philosophy. im writing to seek advice about imposing authority/ facilitating meetings.

it all started last meeting. our group conversation (15 ppl) was going pretty well, until it was derailed by one of our members. We usually stay on topic ( meditation, the mind, morality, spirituality, etc.). we got off on a tangent about flow states when one of the members (we’ll call him h) mentioned their particular flow state activity was math. h ended up at the white board of our meeting room discussing a difficult problem he was yet to solve that had him in a state of “flow”. quickly though, the conversation devolved into him and another member loudly trying to solve a math problem, which disengaged many of the members, who then splintered off into their own conversations. the room devolved into chaos ( loud disjointed conversations, no real flow) for like 5 minutes. i tried to regain control of the room by telling h that we could do this after the meeting. h proceeded to ignore my comments and continued, until one of the general members raised their voice, silencing the commotion.

after the order was reinstated we proceeded to once again have a very compelling and intelligible conversation. the meeting overall went pretty well (except for that 5 minute commotion).

this is by far the most successful meeting we’ve had in terms of engaging conversation, turnout, and participation, which feels good. however, i cant help but feel like an inadequate leader who couldn’t control his own gathering, and had to relegate that responsibility to a general member. it’s frightening to think that if he hadn’t been there, who knows when the order of the meeting would’ve been reinstated.

I cant help but worry this has made some of the members subconsciously lose respect for my authority. Everyone still treated me respectfully and said bye at the end of the meeting, but it’s so embarrassing to think that all of the members witnessed me fail to exert control over my meeting. it feels weird to even say that i have “authority” because we’re all college students of the same age, and id like to not exert such a top down, hierarchical feel. i also really dislike raising my voice, and fear it would make me somewhat disliked. we’re all students and i wanna be friends with the people in my club.

how do i even deal with someone who doesn’t do what i say? what do you do if you exert authority that someone doesnt listen to? how should i proceed moving forward? am i overreaching? any advice is appreciated.