With the school year in its second month, new changes are implemented beyond Schoology and new vending machine snacks. What is formally known as MSA has a new adviser, Brandy Siddiqui, as well as a new name, African and Middle Eastern Club, or AME (ah-me) for short.

According to senior Sagal Abdirahman, though MSA given its name has always been considered a religious group, the main discussions are topics of cultural views, so the name change isn’t far off from what the group is about.

“We can’t really tye religion into it because that the original separation between church and state, said Abdirahman.  “And so we are making it more cultural based  because everyone that comes (most of the kids) has and shares the same culture rather than just going by being muslim.”

According to Siddiqui it sounded like a first generation type of club.

“Students whose parents were immigrants are first generation in America,” said Siddiqui. “There are a lot of similarities there, which we don’t know about or that’s hard to understand.”

“We wanted to like put all the students into a different categories and figure out which type of students were coming, like to separate us from Y.O.D.A and those types of groups was because it was all first generation students,” Abdirahman adds.

With a mother who is a refugee from the Vietnam War, Siddiqui understands. Hearing phrases such as “fat toe” instead of “big toe” or “stray your bed” instead of “make your bed” are common misunderstandings with those whose parents are immigrants according to Siddiqui.

Her role as adviser started because she was trying to get connected with MSA.

 “That was my initial interest,” she said. “And then after talking with someone who said they needed a faculty advisor, I said I could do it if they would let me.”

 Siddiqui hopes students who come get something out of it like support and should expect to use the club as an outlet to talk about cultural topics, home life as well as having a liaison between students and teachers.

 African and Middle Eastern Club is an open meeting for students, fourth or sixth period on Tuesdays in C350. Meetings start fourth hour, Oct 7.