Morgan’s Anti-Defamation League
How This Club Came Together
Anti-Defamation League also known as ADL is a leading world anti-hate organization. The Morgan ADL club raises money that goes towards spreading awareness about various negative actions against minorities. Their goal is to battle against antisemitism, extremism, discrimination, and hate of all kind.
Senior Sara Gelven started the club last year. She chose mathematics teacher Julien Milcent as the advisor as well as school counselor Moheba Sayed who joined at the start of this year. The club meets every Friday at 7 am in Mr. Milcent’s room. They discuss future fundraisers, and Sara brings donuts for the group to enjoy.
So far the club has raised money for the Marsha P. Johnson Institute which is an organization that focuses on supporting African American transgender individuals. They held a bake sale at a football game this year to raise money. ADL has also fundraised for the IRIS Run for Refugees at a boys’ basketball game last year against Valley by raffling off Valentine’s Day goodie bags.
They are currently working on a new fundraiser for the Christmas season. They plan to host a movie night allowing all families in Clinton to come and enjoy the Grinch movie for the holidays. The date is set to be Friday, December 16 at 5-7pm. Entry is $5 per person and everyone is welcome to play games and enjoy the movie together as a community.
Sara wanted to start ADL because she felt like there wasn’t enough support and representation for different minorities at Morgan that focuses on all groups that feel misrepresented. Sara shared that the hardest part of creating this club at Morgan was “push back from administration.” They thought ADL was too similar to other clubs even though it had different intentions. Morgan’s ADL focuses on fundraising for minority groups. It was also hard to get students to show up every Friday and get there at Morgan at 7. Despite the challenges, she was able to create ADL. The club has done a lot for the community.
Sara feels the most rewarding part is at the end of each fundraiser when they count up the money and knew it was going to a good cause.