The Italian community lost its representation for many years until a professor in the Italian department resurrected, revived and restored the club in October 2010. Now, it is prospering.
Enrico Vettore is an assistant professor of Italian and also serves as Club Italia’s adviser. When Vettore arrived at Cal State Long Beach in 2007, the club was already inactive, but he had the idea to start it up again.
“I suppose the people — president, vice president, other people — moved or graduated,” Vettore said.
Although recently renewed, Club Italia has already been recognized on campus with two awards. It won the Silver Award for Creative Marketing/Advertising Campaign in 2010, and the Bronze Award for New Organization of the Year in 2011.
Once Alessandro Russo, former Club Italia president, heard about the competition, he sent out fliers to show samples of how they have reached out to the public for events. The distribution of their colorful and artistic fliers through Facebook, e-mails, and on campus had a tremendous impact on the success of their events during the previous two semesters.
According to Vincenzo Amalfitano, president of Club Italia, they have accumulated approximately 400 members from last year and this semester that are listed.
According to Brianna Richardson, vice president of Club Italia, there are several events that occur within the Italian community that many people are unaware of due to lack of publication.
“I think we’ve improved in the last year of really letting people know there is an Italian presence in Southern California,” Russo said.
Even on campus, many students did not know the Italian presence, and the club’s purpose is to make the campus aware of the Italian community.
“[During] Week of Welcome we had a lot of people come to our table and say, ‘I’m Italian American,’ but they had no idea we were on campus,” Russo said.
Club Italia hosts events such as film series and lectures to match what is being taught in certain Italian studies classes. They try to link up the events to match classes to give a broader positive perspective on Italian and Italian American culture.
Next semester, Club Italia will focus on Italian American culture because an Italian American culture class will be offered again since it was discontinued eight years ago and in English for the first time.
Club Italia encourages its members to get involved in learning about the Italian and Italian American culture, but it is not required.
“We’re actually working with the Graziadio Center for a study abroad program in Italy this summer,” Richardson said. “Anyone is invited to go.”
Club Italia is a club where students can get an insight to the culture even if they do not speak Italian or are not Italian.
“We more celebrate Italian culture and Italian American culture because we want to invite students to come to our events, but not everybody speaks Italian,” Russo said.
Some of their events are hosted regularly such as Club Italia Night. Last semester, Club Italia Night was held at Aroma di Roma Caffe Italiano.
“Club Italia Night goes on every semester, it’s actually coming up,” Amalfitano said. “We go to a restaurant, and they donate a percentage of the profit of the people we bring in that night.”
Other events occur only once, such as “The Children Survivors of World War II Italy” event from last semester.
“We had the World War speakers come in, that was the best one, I’d have to say,” Amalfitano said.
Even after the semester ends, Club Italia does not. The club still continues to host events. Club Italia even participates in Italian holidays, such as Ferragosto on Aug 15. Approximately 200 people assembled at the beach to celebrate the summer holiday.
“We even did an August event where we were at Huntington Beach,” Russo said. “Ferragosto is an Italian holiday where everyone goes to the beach.”
The next Club Italia event will be a lecture on Nov. 4 entitled, “Language Transfer in the Case of Cognate Languages: Evidence from Developing Trilingual Children” and will be presented by Simona Montanari of Cal State Los Angeles.
Disclaimer: The Daily 49er is not responsible for Postings made on www.daily49er.wpengine.com. Persons commenting are solely responsible for Postings made on this website. Persons commenting agree to the Terms of Use of the website. If Postings do not abide by the Rules of Conduct or Posting Regulations as listed in the Postings Policy, the Daily 49er has all rights to delete Postings as it deems necessary. The Daily 49er strongly advises individuals to not abuse their First Amendment rights, and to avoid language suggestive of hate speech. This site also encourages users to make Postings relevant to the article or other Postings.
