Middle-Eastern Club
Mission Statement
The Middle Eastern Club is an organization of Dickinson students that is devoted to educating and celebrating the cultures of the Middle East. The Club offers events that are held to open the minds of individuals to a rich and diverse culture.
Events
Usually Dinners because people enjoy those, and it gains excellent attendance. So then, we use those dinners as our venues to do more academically oriented things, and add the educational component. Big Dinners, Coffeehouses, and controversial movies.
Yes. For example, we have worked with Tikkun in the past, a progressive Zionist organization, and recently we worked with Hillel, the jewish group on campus. With Tikkun, we sponsored a week of Middle Eastern Conflict awareness. In consisted of co-sponsored Dinners, a co-sponsored comedian duo (arab and jewish), and we brought in an organization dedicated to the cause of arabs and jews working together for peace and coexistence. This year with Hillel, we showed a controversial movie that addressed the Palestinian side of the Middle East Conflict, a side that you haven’t always seen, a more critical side. An arab dinner preceeded this event, and a very engaging and successful discussion moderated by Shalom Staub, and Prof. Commins followed.
Effectiveness
12-15 dedicated members 5. We always try to balance academic and social aspects within our programming. We, as long 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.
Problems/Dilemmas
People being narrowminded. Sometimes, people are so narrow-minded, that they 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 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.
