Humanities Central: Where activism starts
Focusing on the club officers’ passion and goals this year
Humanities Central Interest Club meeting graphic from last year in C106. Photo used with permission from Jiani Tian.
September 26, 2019
Humanities Central, a newly introduced club, comes to MVHS with only one thing in mind: standing up for what each individual believes in.
As soon as senior and president Jiani Tian found out that New York passed a ban on cat declawing, Tian wanted to do more to raise awareness about the controversy over animal rights. Inspired by the ban, Tian and her friends sought to create Humanities Central. In terms of main focuses for the club, she hopes to improve animal rights, an issue she believes doesn’t get the awareness it feels it deserves.
“I just really want to create a club where the things you do actually have a purpose behind them,” Tian said. “The activism you do actually comes from an aspiration, goal or issue that you care about rather than just doing arbitrary volunteering in the community.”
Senior and logistician of Humanities Central Bianca Yongyuth personally wants to focus on environmental issues. After past efforts to make her own club to help the environment failed, she didn’t have the chance to spread awareness about climate change. Now, she has the chance to advocate for actions that are environmentally friendly.
“I was definitely happy about [the ban],” Yongyuth said. “It was finally showing that a lot of people, like a whole state, cared about something. Hopefully, it will stand as an influence for other states as well.”
Since students in Humanities Central are passionate about different topics, each person can choose different paths for activism. This year, Senior and Director of Outreach Sachi Bhatkar has a vision of advocating for women’s rights, especially abortion rights in the U.S.
“Women have the right to choose what they want to do with their own body,” Bhatkar said. “Someone else should not be choosing for them … It’s their choice at the end of the day.”
In addition to women’s rights, senior and Director of Finance Anusha Pothineni believes that it is important to address change in the environment around MVHS.
“Some people at MVHS think it’s okay to use racial slurs casually, and I’ve always been against that,” Pothineni said. “Since we don’t have that much racial diversity at our school, people need to understand different cultures too.”
This year, Humanities Central is going to host a pet adoption day event that raises awareness about cat declawing, striving to ban it in California. In addition, students will be able to adopt pets from nearby shelters.
Although Humanities Central is a new club, plans for future activism have already been taking root. They plan to host more events and possibly speak in the announcements to spread awareness about what each member is passionate about.
Pothineni wants to continue activism throughout college at NYU by attending protests, events to spread awareness and helping her community.
“Any sort of issues that we see in society, our goal is to make at least a small impact on our little community and maybe it could make a bigger impact on a bigger community,” Pothineni said. “I don’t want to just sit by and see injustice happen and not do anything about it.”
Click here to learn about the importance of activism!
