I should've posted this a long time ago

[puszysty]

I'm kind of frustrated with IRC (International Relations Club). They had a meeting about next year, and it seems like they're basically turning it into International Students Club. One of the big focuses for next year is going to be a dinner night like once a month where a couple people get to share their culture. Which is a really cool idea. But. Prez of the club says something like this "we're all experiencing American culture now, but I think we should share our home cultures with each other" (not exact because this meeting happened over a week ago). So, this is about sharing cultures, but there really isn't a need to share American culture because we're living it (at least that's what it sounded like to me). I proposed also having meetings, but they took it as meetings to plan events (like the dinners). I did not join this club to be a spectator dammit.

Comments

[therealsolitare.livejournal.com]

Good thing you clarified what IRC is for you. I thought for a second there you were talking about Internet Relay Chat, and I thought to myself "Why is Steph having problems with IRC?"

[zifnab15.livejournal.com]

Maybe they'll let you do a dinner too if you can point out the distinctiveness of your home culture. I think the prez has a point though that most of the people on this campus do have a good amount of exposure to American culture in general. Hmm... I've having a hard time seeing ways to make the group equally inclusive to both foreign and local students as it seems you want... I don't know...

[puszysty.livejournal.com]

Distinctive? My culture? See earlier identity crisis post.

Well this year, when I asked the leaders of the club (seniors this year) what it was about, they said to discuss important international issues. Granted, we never did that because we never had a single meeting. I'm just thinking that the 'solution' to that is kind of exclusive.

[zifnab15.livejournal.com]

I mean in terms of food. I'm guessing that your family doesn't strongly connect with any country of origin in terms of food, but is there anything that your community has that might be considered different from the typical American diet? I could argue that my community does, but I'm not sure if they would want me to come up with 10 different ways to eat brats :)

Anyways, to get back to a relevant point, that idea of having meetings to discuss issues sounds good. Or, if they insist on having "events" you could try setting up dates for a discussion group related to different issues on certain dates and then people can show up to the ones they want. That's essentially the same thing as a meeting, but the different terminology might click better with senior presidente. Well, ttfn and have a great day!