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The Arab Heritage
Club
In 1994 an article about clubs in AUB stated,
"The Arab Heritage Club supports revival of traditional norms, and cultural
trends in the Arab world." What does the Arab Heritage Club represent today?
According to current members they are a club that deals with Arab cultural
issues. The club activities range from book exhibitions of Arab books on
politics, poetry and Arab writers, to concerts and cinema festivals for Arab
music composers and movie directors. The Arab Heritage Club first appears
in the University archives in 1988. But during the war many clubs existed on
paper, but not all were publicized or active. What the case with the Arab
Heritage Club was, Outlook was not able to find out. "The Arab Heritage
Club has been through several phases," said Naji Issa a member of the club who
was vice president in 1998. "One of those phases is when a large majority of
the members of the club joined the No Frontiers group in AUB." A large
proportion of the Arab Heritage Club joined the No Frontiers in AUB because
they share common ideas and ways of achieving these goals. But, this does not
mean that the club is restricted to No Frontiers only, as many people believe.
"If someone does not agree with what we do, then they won't join us. We don't
have restrictions," said Issa. The Arab Heritage Club does not restrict their
membership to anyone. The University lays down the regulations concerning who
can join which club and what the requirements should be. Basically anyone who
pays the LL5000 membership fee will become a member of the club. From the day
they pay they start receiving information about club meetings and
activities. The club works with many other clubs on campus and also with
some individuals on campus. Some of their exhibitions were held in conjunction
with the Palestinian Cultural Club, especially when the activity dealt with
Palestinian issues they support. Movies were presented with the Cine Club. The
Arab Heritage Club sponsored a Women's Week and they did this with the Women's
Rights Club. One of their famous activities that has become popular with
the students at the beginning of every semester is the Book Fair for used text
books sold at half the price of the AUB Bookstore. This year's fair was a great
success considering how high the prices in the Bookstore were. The Club
tries to keep the Arab Heritage alive by focusing on Arab productions such as
films, books and performers. "The title holds many meanings," said Naji Issa.
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