Middle Eastern and North African Students fight for inclusivity on campus

The Middle Eastern and North African Student Assembly, or MENASA, held a student assembly Friday where they presented a petition demanding the university to recognize their racial identity.

Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) students expressed frustration over being “mislabeled, and unaccounted for” in their admissions to USC.

“This lack of university racial/ethnic inclusion causes inaccurate depiction of data, including student body diversity demographics, funding, research, and equitable minority resources,” the petition reads.

MENA students argued that when applying to universities, there is no racial category for them.

According to the petition, the U.S. Census continues to classify MENA individuals as white, regardless of the ceaseless efforts, pushing to add a MENA category to the census.

“The resounding reality is that MENA individuals, such as myself, are classified as white but without the many privileges of whiteness, and it continues to cause resounding problems within the MENA community,” Patricia Gerges states in the petition, which has garnered nearly 200 signatures.

Students believe they are being ignored and tucked away into boxes that they don’t fit in and that this lack of inclusion leads to misrepresentation of student body diversity and statistics.

This petition, which was created by USC senior Patricia Gerges, also noted the lack of resources that are available to MENA students specifically at USC, such as not having an Alumni Association or MENA-specific counseling for students sharing the same background.

“There’s all these resources available for other ethnic groups, and other identity groups, but the Middle East and North African students had nothing,” Anthony Khoory, one of the co-directors of MENASA, said. “So I realized that was partially due to lack of university data and lack of visibility for our community, because we have no box.”

Nour Myra Geha, the other co-director, a sophomore international relations major, said that MENA students are asking to be recognized as their own group at USC and receive what other minority students on campus do. She thinks that, when cultural groups aren’t recognized by the university, they don’t receive the resources they need, such as student union centers or specialized support from faculty.

“[T]he thing is, … if we’re not recognized on campus, we don’t get the resources that other ethnic groups get,” Geha said. “There’s like one Persian therapist on campus, but I think that’s it,” Geha said. “Usually when you go to therapists, you can ask for [someone from] your culture, because [they] can relate more to your story.”

Gerges also published an opinion piece for the Daily Trojan about the need for MENA acknowledgement. She said she wants to ensure that all minority communities aren’t marginalized, both nationally and within the USC community.

“I really, truly wish for a day where the U.S. recognizes us as a minority group and actually looks into our data when it comes to health research, our health status, income status, income gap, education status, language assistance,” she said. “If people in our community continue to see small things like that and continue to try to take initiatives and start to talk and speak out about it, then it will reach the stage where we’re all going to be recognized in the U.S.”

Gerges has reached out to Senior Director of Student Equity and Inclusion Naddia Palacios, regarding the lack of a category for MENA students and has scheduled a meeting to discuss gaps in inclusion with university officials.

Overall the petition’s mission is for every student’s ethnic background to be celebrated and embraced by the campus community. The group says that it is more than just a MENA box on official forms, it is about having their racial identity seen and acknowledged.