4:45 PM: tension in the air as the officer set up for the meeting. All the officers are nervous
and excited at the same time. We had spent all summer preparing and planning for this big day,
the first Cambodian Student Society general meeting for this year. We could not help but wonder
how it will be like. How many people are going to show up? Does everybody know his or her part?
Is there something we forgot? What will the members think about our presentation? We knew we
did not do everything as planned to prepare for this meeting. It is too late now to try and do what we
forgot. All we can do now is hope that everything will turn out fine.
5:00 PM: the members are just starting to arrive. We hope everyone can find us due to our short
notice with the relocation of our meeting place. All the officers have arrived except for the Secretary.
He is late as usual. All the setting is in place. We have the food and drinks all set up. More and more
people arrived.
We started the meeting by allowing everyone to meet each other and mingle. We passed out our
newly published first issue of our newsletter. Everyone seems excited and surprised with the
newsletter. As people continued to mingle and ate, more and more people arrived. Some informed
us they had a hard time finding the new meeting place. They said they had a hard time finding the
signs directing to the new location. We apologized to those for the inconvenience. We greeted
everyone and thank everyone for coming. WE passed out our membership application. We asked
them to fill it out if they are interested in joining the club.
5:18 PM: finally I, the Secretary arrived. I was surprise to see so many people showed up. I was
glad to see everyone happy and busy socializing. I too also began mingling and meeting some of the
people. I grabbed some pizza and drink. I realized I made it just in time because the meeting was
about to start.
Steve, the President, called everyone to come in to start the meeting. We started the meeting with
the introduction of our advisor, this year officers, and former officers of the Cambodian Student
Society.
- John D' Amicantonio - Advisor
- Dr. Teri S. Yamada - Advisor
- Steve Ouch - President
- Sopheap Keo - Vice President
- Chhuon Sen - Vice President #2
- Roeun Chin - Secretary
- Sokha Huot - Treasurer
- Kiry Poeun - Treasurer #2
- Phany Kong - Public Relation/Webmaster
After the introduction of the officers and advisors, we did an ice-breaking activity that allowed
everyone a chance to introduce themselves to others. Phany and Chhoun coordinated and started
the activity as everyone introduces themselves one by one. It was a fun activity and it allowed
everyone to get to know each other.
The meeting continued on with the announcement of our plans for the club. We want for this year to
better serve our members and our community. We plan to have our usual annual cultural chow. We
announced about our Christmas party on December 18th. More information about the party will be
announced in future meetings. Also this year for the first time CSS will put out a newsletter call
Perspective News which contain stories, writing and news about our clubs, other Cambodian clubs,
and community news. The newsletter will consist of writing which pertain to anything related to
Cambodian or Khmer culture, customs, arts, history, and heritage. We do encourage everyone to
write and submit writings to us for publication. We informed everyone that we cannot accept writings
or be directly involve with writings which discriminate race, nationalities, disability, religion, gender or
age. And CSS cannot accept writings which will promote a particular sect of religion or politic. We
feel these issues are very controversial.
We would like to avoid problems that might arise. Perspective News newsletter will be published in
full color. We will publish 800 copies per issue. We plan to distribute them to our members, other
clubs, and Cambodian communities in Long Beach and anywhere else. We went on to discuss other
matters such as the clubs budget and our source of funding. Cambodian Star Search and
Entertainment donated $250 for the cost of publishing the first newsletter. We thanked them and our
other donators. Also we, the Cambodian Student Society, donated $250 as scholarship for
Cambodian students in Cambodia. The money is sent with Lokrue Manara. Lokrue Manara
accepted the check and gave a brief speech in Khmer. In his speech he thanked the club for the
donation. He will make sure that the organization in Cambodia will receive our contribution and he
will bring proof that the right person has properly received it. We concluded our first general meeting
with a couple of votes on a couple of issues. One issue was how often will future CSS meetings be.
The other issue was should we have a bonfire or a picnic for our 2nd general meeting.
The members voted for the meetings to be every other Fridays at 5:00 PM. Our 2nd general meeting
was to be a bonfire/meeting at Bolsa Chica Beach at 5:00 PM. Steve, the President, thanked
everyone for coming and adjourned the meeting.
Roeun Chin, CSS Secretary