The first South Asian Student Union Club (SASU) meeting was held on Friday October 13th, 2023 in room G4. During this meeting, a slideshow was presented introducing the leadership. This included secretary sophomore Akhilia Bhavagan, vice presidents junior Meeran Gill and junior Sidd Iyer, and co-presidents seniors Arjun Krishnan, Zarah Thomas, and Naina Srivastava.
Along with introductions, the slideshow included a form that asked the individuals attending this meeting some questions. These questions included what food they should bring to future meetings, what field trips they should do, and what stuff they should talk about during meetings.
For this meeting Zarah’s dad went to Trader Joes to get samosas for the meeting. Usually they get food for the meetings in different ways. Sometimes all the leadership meet up and cook food the night before the meeting or other times they buy stuff at local indian stores. Counselor Amardeep Dhaliwal also helps get food for meetings as she is the club’s advisor.
The first meeting of the year was simply an introductory meeting. The goal was to introduce everyone to each other and just simply enjoy the club as a whole. Gill stated “I hope this meeting helped the South Asian students at the school feel more included and connected.”
The meeting consisted of eating samosas, playing kahoot, filling out forms, and just talking with other South Asian students. People liked the meeting with sophomore Nishta Mukundan saying “The meeting was really fun.”
The meeting was very similar to last year’s first meeting; however, the few differences were that it happened later in the year and there was less food. Although this didn’t really affect anyone, it was noticeably later in the year than last year. This was because most of the leadership were seniors and had to worry about college apps.
Most of the leadership believe that the first meeting of the year went fairly well and that a lot of people enjoyed it. They got a lot more people from all different grades to come, with around 40-50 people that attended the meeting.
The holidays they are planning to celebrate this year are Diwali and Holi. They also want to do a field trip similar to last year:going on a tour of Berkeley during the second semester to learn more about their culture. They also might plan a banquet with everyone from the club where they all go out to dinner and dress up. This would be the first time this club has ever done something like this.
Diwali is the Festival of Lights. It is a major holiday in India and is going to be celebrated on November 12 this year. It is the celebration that light will always triumph over darkness. Holi is a hindu holiday that is celebrated in India. On this day people celebrate it with dancing and color. It is known as the festival of colors.
As of now, this club doesn’t have a grant. However they do have a lot of money from the grant last year and they are trying to get mini grants from the Diversity Equity Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) group which is provided by the parents.
The club’s goal is to be able to create a community for the South Asian community which this year’s first meeting gave them the groundroots for that. The South Asian community at Campolindo isn’t small and therefore makes this club a safe space for people to meet each other. Thomas said “my goal for this year is to have people feel like they have a place.”
