Not a TV show, CSI club seeks something different

Melody Tavallaee, Staff Reporter|February 22, 2017

Trying to help people on campus understand each other better, senior Zaki Sayyid started the Culture and Social Issues club with the intent of doing more than just a weekly meeting. “We also hopefully plan to do activities on the weekends, Sayyid said. If there’s a really culturally or socially relevant film that comes out, we would go see it or if there’s a festival or something like that, we would go to that and that would be a weekend event for us.”

Marisa Uddin

Trying to help people on campus understand each other better, senior Zaki Sayyid started the Culture and Social Issues club with the intent of doing more than just a weekly meeting. “We also hopefully plan to do activities on the weekends,” Sayyid said. “If there’s a really culturally or socially relevant film that comes out, we would go see it or if there’s a festival or something like that, we would go to that and that would be a weekend event for us.”

Thoughts and opinions on various issues in the world right now are the focus of the new discussion based Culture and Social Issues Club that meets after school on Wednesdays in C113.

“Before we have our meeting, there’s usually some sort of pre-reading or a video that we watch to get us prefaced on the topic,” club founder and junior Zaki Sayyid said. “It’s just an avenue for people to come in and discuss and share their opinions.”  

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It’s a safe environment to discuss differing opinions,

— sophomore Melissa Rondinelli

One of those willing to share her opinion is sophomore Melissa Rondinelli who said the club can help students expand their outlook.

“There are many issues that people are afraid to discuss, because of conflict but it’s a safe environment to discuss differing opinions,” Rondinelli said. “I think that it’s going to improve our campus because people will be more aware of what’s going on in the world outside of their Frisco bubble.”  

The club is not an official school club but hopes to evolve in the future and build off of what they learn during each meeting.

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Promoting understanding between people is the best thing that we can do, especially since we live in such a diverse society,

— club founder junior Zaki Sayyid

“We have these things called club journals where we’re making sure to keep track of what we’re discussing,” Sayyid said.  “In the future we may revisit some topics or go back and look at certain club journals and say how’ve we evolved, how’ve we learned, how can we approach this issue again.”

The club’s weekly meetings will each have the goal of improving members’ understandings of others’ opinions.

“Our purpose is to understand where people are coming from and I think promoting understanding between people is the best thing that we can do, especially since we live in such a diverse society,” Sayyid said. “Every week we pick a topic or idea that affects culture or society and talk about it with the end goal of discovering why people think the way they do.”
Correction: this story was updated on Feb. 24 to correct the spelling of Zaki Sayyid’s last name. In the original post Sayyid was erroneously spelled Siyyid.