New Middle Eastern Student Association

By Anand Venigalla
Assistant Features Editor

Nuvaera Mumnoon, a freshman, biomedical science major with business minor and Humdia Barakzai have recently been approved by SGA in the formation of the Middle Eastern Student Association. The first meeting took place on Feb. 20th during common hour.

The goal of the club which currently has 23 members is, according to Mumnoon, to “learn about different heritages and cultures and to put the Middle Eastern culture out there.” Nuvaera Mumnoon, who is Pakistani, feels that there’s not a Middle Eastern presence and that her efforts are intended to be a balance to the Greek life on campus.

Although Nuvaera is a freshman, she’s not inexperienced in club formation. “When I was in high school, I started a bunch of clubs like Middle Eastern Ethnic Awareness, but this is college so it’s a bit different because we have a wide range of people of different ages, different mind-sets,” Mumnoon said.

Nuvaera Mumnoon already has plans for what her club plans to do. “We’re gonna have a bunch of bake sales, we might have henna nights, as well as a ball gown,” said Mumnoon. In addition, Nuvaera wants to address the problems that Muslim women who wear the hijab might face. “Then we have some Indian holidays like Divali, as well as a Palestinian night,” Mumnoon said.

Regarding food, the club will primarily rely on catering. “We’re gonna have Afghan food, Indian food, Pakistani food, Egyptian food, a lot of different food, so we’ll try to cater so we don’t have to do it all ourselves and also we have health cautions we have to be aware of,” said Mumnoon.

As for meeting plans, the club has not settled on a date. “So as of now the first meeting will be Tuesday. After that we might just do a biweekly meeting or even more,” Mumnoon said.

Nuvaera Mumnoon is confident that her leadership experience in high school will help her at college, but she will face challenges. “One of the biggest challenges is because I’m only a freshman and I do know a wide range of people, the toughest [challenge] is that we have a lot of seniors here and I’m in competition with them. I feel competition between us when there really isn’t. They’re just intimidating, I guess” Mumnoon said.