Fourth Estate/ Viviana Smith

Board members of the Anthropology Club at Mason discuss their plans of rebuilding

BY ALEXANDRA HENRIQUES, STAFF WRITER

Current board members of the Anthropology Club at Mason are working to gain more campus awareness about their mission and enacting rebuilding efforts. 

The club’s mission is to embrace diversity, support multiculturalism, global perspectives and encourage cross-cultural learning. They plan to support their mission by conducting meetings for those interested in anthropology, helping to provide students opportunities in anthropology and hosting events. 

Junior Fatma Fareha, vice president of the club, studies archeology and uses her role in the club to help people understand the “beautiful tapestry of human culture through digging it up.” 

The club has made good progress during last fall and this spring semester. One successful highlight of theirs was taking a trip to Washington D.C. for a private tour of The Smithsonian Institution’s Human Origins Program with Dr. Briana Pobiner, a prehistoric archeologist.  

“Seeing how many people were willing to make the trip to D.C. and sign up was really nice,” senior Madison Clayton, president of the club said.  

This semester, the club hosted a book fair where students were able to take a free book related to anthropology, and a symposium titled “Death and Violence in Non-Western Religion” with Mason professors as speakers. 

“Seeing professors outside of an academic setting and being able to talk about their research, they tend to really light up,” Clayton said. 

Interacting with professors outside of the classroom helps create a connection between students and professors, and also establishes a sense of community in the field, according to Clayton. It is for these reasons the club was excited to set up the symposium. 

The club also has a podcast available on Spotify called “The Anthro Apology” where members talk about anthropology topics in a relaxed setting.  

“Our goal with creating this podcast is to spark conversations about the controversies and shortcomings in the field of anthropology that haven’t been thoroughly addressed or that we feel is under-addressed,” Fareha said. These issues include difficulty in the job field, people abusing their power specifically over minorities and harm to indigenous people, according to Fareha.  

Club members are making it a goal to offer more resources to Mason students after realizing the job market in anthropology is difficult to enter.

“We need to find more opportunities and give people more access to resources, even if it is not on campus,” Fareha said. “We do live in D.C. which is very rich with resources for cultural anthropology as well as archeology.”  

Fareha encourages students to register with the Consortium of Universities of the Washington Metropolitan Area due to their notable anthropology departments and for opportunities to network across universities. 

“One of the big things that students in the anthropology department have said is finding experience in the field is hard, so finding [these opportunities] would be great…that’s my goal,” Clayton said. 

For those interested in connecting with the Anthropology Club at Mason, you can contact them through Mason360 and Instagram.