Middle-Eastern Club

Mission Statement

The Middle Eastern Club is dedicated to promoting cultural awareness, education, and understanding about the Middle East to our community. Our goal is to continue exposing our community to the cultural diversity and traditions that are unique to the region. We also aspire to educate our community to better understand the realities and intricacies that govern the Middle East. The club is open to everyone and seeks to bring together all people who share a general interest in the region. We are renown for our bi-annual dinners, and hope to expand our events to include more exposure to Middle eastern culture and diversity such as trips to art exhibits, dance lessons, speakers, cooking classes and more. This mission statement can be viewed here.

Events

Themed dinners are very popular events on campus. They are well attended and give exposure to the club. MEC uses these dinners as a venue to promote its more academic aspects. Other frequent events include Coffeehouse discussions, and controversial movies, both of which spark intellectual debate.

MEC has worked with Tikkun in the past, a progressive Zionist organization, and recently worked with Hillel, the Jewish group on campus. With Tikkun, MEC sponsored a week of Middle Eastern Conflict awareness. While working with Hillel, MEC co-sponsored a comedian duo (Arab and Jewish) and brought in an organization dedicated to the cause of Arabs and Jews working together for peace and coexistence. This year MEC worked with Hillel again and showed a controversial movie that addressed the Palestinian side of the Middle East Conflict, a perspective that many are unaware of. An Arab dinner preceeded this event, and a very engaging and successful discussion moderated by Shalom Staub and Professor Commins followed.

Effectiveness

MEC has 12-15 dedicated members. We asked these members to rate themselves on a scale from 1-5, 5 being the highest. They rate themselves a 5, because they "always try to balance academic and social aspects within [their] programming... along with many of the groups on campus, have begun to move away from strictly entertainment programming, and are trying to tackle the more pertinent issues, the ones that result in conversation and dialogue." 4

Problems/Dilemmas

They find their biggest problem to be narrow minded people. Afif Kulaylat, co-President, tells us that sometimes " [narrowminded people] completely miss the point of what the event or program was trying to accomplish, and instead go into defensive mode and from there, misconstrue everything into an attack on themselves and their principles. People need to be able to look critically at themselves, before they can criticize anything else. Some people are just too proud, and others are just too ignorant." 4

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