"What does democracy mean to you?" The question was asked by Melinda McClimans, Assistant Director of Ohio State University's Middle Eastern Studies. Friday January 28th was the kick off to Centennial High School's first ever Middle Eastern Conference. The gathering had Centennial students represented from nine different countries discuss their views of government, fueled by recent protests in Egypt.
"[It means that] everybody can take a part in the government; no single party rule," responded Ahmed Al Saeed representing Iraq.
Melinda McClimans further expounded, "Every individual has needs and wants to feel like their government is fulfilling those needs."
McClimans started speaking Arabic in high school and fell in love with the language and culture. "I always loved the culture, loved learning about it". She felt the absence of Middle Eastern culture and history in her high school classes and it was disheartening. She came to Centennial to propose her idea of exchanging educational ideas with countries, like Turkey, and to include them in the high school curriculum.
The backbone of the discussion was the recent events in Egypt. The uprising by a young generation of protesters used social networking to start a revolution. "Its powerful, " McClimans expressed. "Communication is powerful…governments' fear that"
The students later went into debate about National Identity, tensions and tolerance.
"We should accept each other's individual beliefs, you can't just say, 'Oh, she's Muslim or he's Christian'", voiced Sharm Bilal, a Centennial student representing Kurdistan. "It's much more than religion. national identity is a face with many heads."
Whether it's tackling political hot button issues or discussing ways in which cultural identity should be measured, one thing is for certain- Generation Y is not settling, period. Whenever there is change, there seems to be a cost."