After not having a Middle Eastern North African Student Union on campus since 2020, this school year, Sara Salehi (’26), Sophie Salehi (’28) and Farah Sandoval (’28) founded a new one.
MENA serves as both a club and affinity group for middle and upper school students. They meet every other week on Thursdays at lunch in room 236, and history teacher Whitney Wagner currently serves as their club advisor. Sophie Salehi said she has wanted to co-found MENA since she was in middle school.
“In middle school, I felt underrepresented,” Sophie Salehi said. “I just wanted to make a space where people of Middle Eastern and North African ethnicities and cultures can feel connected with each other.”
Similarly, Sandoval said she wanted to co-found MENA because there had not been an official space dedicated to this community during her time at Archer.
“I felt like there was always somebody to present for the Muslim religious holidays, [but] I just wanted there to be a club for that,” Sandoval said. “I know that Archer has such a large Jewish population, which is part of that region, and I just felt it was something that needed to happen.”
Sandoval is half Middle Eastern on her mom’s side. She shared the story behind how that side of her family came to the United States, beginning with her mother’s birth during the Lebanese Civil War.
“My mom being an immigrant is really significant to me. I love talking about it — it really means a lot to me that she escaped this war zone and is here and working and gets to have this life,” Sandoval said. “She was born in Lebanon during a war. She was 8, [and] it was 1984 approximately … She had to be born in the hallway of the hospital, because the rooms [had] windows, and if a bomb [went] off and the glass [got] everywhere, that [would’ve been] really dangerous.”
Sandoval described the course of travel her mother took, ending with her arriving and living in Los Angeles.
“She was on a cargo ship to Cyprus, which is like a little island, she went from Lebanon to Cyprus, to somewhere in Europe and then to Atlanta for four weeks,” Sandoval said. “Then she came to LA and lived in that circle hotel right by the 405 [freeway]. That’s the first place she lived in LA, so this city is special to her.”
Sara Salehi described her and her sister’s cultural background and how her family engages in traditions such as creating a Haft-Sin for Nowruz, which is the Persian new year.
“My parents left Iran before they turned 18, so they were pretty young,” Sara Salehi said. “The big holiday that most Persians celebrate is Nowruz, which is the one we celebrate as well beginning of spring. We also speak Farsi. But it’s kind of hard to connect with that culture because it’s difficult to go to Iran right now with everything that’s happening in the Middle East.”
In regards to the conflict in the Middle East, Sandoval said she wants to address it with an information session at some point later this year or next, especially due to the recent ceasefire deal negotiations occurring Jan. 15.
“Obviously, there’s huge war going on in Gaza right now, which I think was a motivating factor for starting the club. Also, I just think it’s important to have all perspectives. JSU did a great job presenting on the issue and having as little bias as possible, but there’s always going to be bias in everything ever,” Sandoval said. “So it’s kind of our job to have as open of a perspective as possible, but also to just provide all the information that we can.”
Sandoval said the conflict has impacted the way other students view MENA. Although Sandoval said she has not heard anyone say anything hurtful about it, she did say she felt a bit of underlying uncertainty within the Archer community.
“I could kind of feel like there was a little bit of a weariness about starting a Middle Eastern Student Union during this time of conflict, but I think that’s kind of why it was important to do it. I understand the apprehension, and it can be a little bit uncomfortable, but I think we have to do it,” Sandoval said. “I can feel that people were like, ‘Oh, do we need this right now?’ But I think we do, and I think it’s important to address that and say, ‘This is a little awkward, but it needs to happen. All sides of this need to be represented.'”
Popular culture, especially when meant for a younger audience, negatively portrays Middle Eastern people and enforces harmful stereotypes and assumptions, according to the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. There are Disney movies with negative portrayals of Arabs, often displaying them as villains and rarely as ordinary people. The ADC also noted that “despite the multicultural philosophy that currently prevails in American education, [we have] found many teachers and the public at large not yet sufficiently sensitized to the problem of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim stereotyping.”
Sandoval said the history curriculum and community connection blocks at Archer are effective in addressing and combatting stereotypes surrounding Middle Eastern and North African people.
“Part of the seventh or eighth grade history curriculum is still analyzing Aladdin and talking about all the stereotypes that are a part of that, and it’s been really great,” Sandoval said. “Actually, our advisor is [Wagner], who’s the seventh and eighth grade history teacher, so she’s been a really big help with [teaching] the whole history of stereotypes, and I think that is something that we would want to talk about in the future.”
According to Sophie Salehi, a challenge the club has faced has been low turnout at meetings. She said they have 15 members on their signup sheet, but only around seven people attend.
“Unfortunately, our meetings haven’t been getting many people,” Sophie Salehi said, “so it’s kind of hard to plan them according to how many people we might have, because we’re really not sure.”
When thinking about the future of MENA, especially as a junior, Sara Salehi shared her hopes for Sophie Salehi and Sandoval to continue the club and expand it throughout their time in high school.
“I hope that as more Middle Eastern people and North African people join Archer, the club will get bigger, and people will see it as a safe space,” Sara Salehi said. “I hope that my sister and Farah will be able to keep the club going even after I’m not here.”
