The Sudanese Student Organization is a student-led organization, with Rawan Babiker ‘25 as the club’s president and Layan Ahmed ‘25 as vice president. The club debuted late last year, and its main goal has been to create a community and space for Sudanese students to meet each other and form connections.
One thing really missing from the Sudanese community here in Iowa City or even West is just unity. So, what our club and our mission is just to kind of bring that all together.
— Layan Ahmed ‘25 (Vice President)
Despite starting later than most clubs, its first meeting was met with a crowd of nearly 50+ students. Regardless of the initial turnout, throughout the year, fewer and fewer students began coming to meetings. Then, due to half of their executive board being seniors and graduating that year, they struggled a bit with trying to form any larger-scale events.
There’s no African student, union there’s no Middle eastern student union (at West ) there’s nothing that pertains to us there’s nothing for us, so we thought that this was a good idea.
— Rawan Babiker ‘25 (President)
However, Babiker and Ahmed are optimistic that by building off of what they started last year, they’ll be able to keep some of the more relaxed and ‘hanging out’ aspects from their past meetings while also holding more events outside of school, similarly to the University of Iowa’s Sudanese Student Association.
