Reedies Celebrate Diversity At Multicultural Festival

Thanks to the work of a number of Reed affinity groups, the Multicultural Festival came together last Friday, April 5, from 11:30am to 2:30pm in the GCC Quad. The event featured booths from nine affinity groups, along with a henna artist from Bollywood Henna Art, a caricature artist from Hector’s Caricatures, and live music from Grupo Masato, a Portland-based Afro-Cuban band. The event had a very high turnout, and there were massive lines to get food, some of it student-made, and some catered from Momo House. Students flocked to do crafts and art, join in lottery games, learn traditional dances, and more. To accommodate students observing Ramadan, event coordinators had a table with take-out boxes to save food for later. To encourage students to explore a variety of booths, event coordinators had a raffle game: Students could get stamps from each of the booths, and then after getting five stamps were able to cash in for a raffle ticket for an air fryer. 

The event was coordinated by students Anahi Sanchez Marcial and Nicole Chan, who according to Chan “officially started planning during Paideia week and a little bit before that, but Anahi and I have been wanting to put together an event where all of the affinity groups are able to gather together and share stuff with the community for a really long time and we felt like spring would be the perfect time because it’s sunny outside.”  “We only hope that this event can be something students look up to next year,” says Sanchez Marcial, who wanted to thank the Office for Institutional Diversity, Office of Student Engagement, and the Gray Fund, along with the “lovely, lovely affinity groups” for supporting the event. Chan also noted that “this time in the semester is also really hard so all of our affinity group folks have been working really hard, especially on top of midterms and everything, so I’m just really happy to see this all come together.”

Along with coordinating the overall event, Sanchez Marcial helped with the Latinx Student Union (LSU) table, which served agua de sandia, horchata, and jamaica. Sanchez Marcial emphasized that their “stand really came from a lot of love. One of our agua frescas, we made it ourselves. Generally, we just want to connect with all our community and even though LSU sometimes does events to support our Latinx Reedies, we want to be open because we want to share our traditions and our culture and we’re only hoping that the Multicultural [Festival] can expand this and can continue to grow in the future.” 

At the Hawaii Connection Club (HXCN) table, club members Amber Godefroy and Leilani Goldberg gave away Hawaiian juices, along with advertising the Merrie Monarch Festival and encouraging students to stream it live. The festival, which took place last week, with its last day being April 6, celebrates King Kalākaua, hula, and Hawaiian culture. The festival’s most notable event is what Goldberg described as “the most prestigious hula competition in the entire world.” “We’re trying to get people more aware of what’s going on,” said Goldberg, “especially back home in Hawaiʻi.” While the club attempted to get a hula performer for their booth, they were unfortunately unsuccessful.

At the Asian and Pacific Islander Student Union (APISU) booth, club members Claire Ferrance and Natalie Soutonglong gave out snacks along with organizing an origami booth. The club also taught students the tinikling sequence, a traditional Filipino dance. “It’s really just nice to see all the clubs out here,” says Ferrance. Ferrance also noted that one of their favorite parts of the Multicultural Festival was how different representatives from different clubs were going around swapping things with other tables. 

At the Vietnamese Student Association (VSA) table, Mia Huynh shared a variety of Vietnamese desserts. These included red bean and mung bean desserts, along with lung bean, rice pudding, and pandan cake. Also, the club had Vietnamese-French pastries for students to try, which were really popular. The club also gave out sugarcane juice as a drink. When asked about her favorite parts of the festival overall, Huynh said she was “really excited to try all the different foods, different cuisines, they all look so good.”

At the Jewish Student Union (JSU) table, club president Jesse Weiss explained the cultural background of all of the club’s different food items, which came from different Jewish cultures across the world. This included kugel, an Ashkenazi Jewish dish which is a noodle casserole with apple in cinnamon. “It’s usually made with raisins,” Weiss said, “but I hate that so we didn’t put any raisins in it.” To represent Middle Eastern Jewish cultures, Weiss brought a cucumber tomato salad. She mentioned that she wanted to make more Middle Eastern Jewish dishes but many take around 20 hours. The club also served chocolate babka from Eastern Europe, and cheese bourekas, pastries made with filo dough and cheese, which, according to Weiss, “originate from Turkish Jews who escaped the Spanish Inquisition and are common among Jewish communities in the Middle East.”

At the Japanese Heritage Student Union (JHSU) table, the club had an onigiri-making booth, with salmon and pickled plum, although they ran out of onigiri supplies after 30 minutes. The club also had a Kuji-biki raffle, common in many Japanese department stores. Students could grab a ball with a number on it, and depending on the number they could win snacks, stickers, posters, stationary, or a tissue box. Club member Julianna Namikas explained how “it’s very common in Japan as a marketing tactic because most people win tissues (like we were handing out) but with little flyers inside!” “I really want to try all the food, although I’m not going to be able to,” says Namikas, who hopes that “everybody likes cherry blossom season, it’s great.”

At the Black Student Union (BSU) table, students were able to try drinks and snacks from Black-owned companies. Club signator Andee Gude explained,, “WeWe have these granola snacks by a place called Oh-Mazing Food. We have some tea from Adjourn, which is also a Black-owned company. We have some prints from the Studio Museum in Harlem which is one of the biggest hubs for Black art and culture. They’re from an exhibit that Kehinde Wiley curated. And then we also have prints from Black musicians like Drake, Beyoncé, and Frank Ocean. We also have a Black trivia game.” The booth also featured a game in which students would use a stack of cards from Ebony magazine featuring events in Black history from every day in the year to check what famous events in Black history happened on their birthday. This Quest writer decided to check what happened on their birthday, April 22, which coincidentally was also Gude’s birthday, notable for musician George Benson releasing his recording of “On Broadway” in 1978. 

At the Southwest Asia and North Africa Student Union (SWANA) table, club members served chicken shawarma, pita, dolma, and hummus to students, along with having an art table. Club member Omar Youssif explains how the club is “going to be doing community artwork and Arabic calligraphy. I’m from Egypt, I speak Arabic and know how to write it, so I’m going to write some Arabic words for people to copy–because I don’t really assume people know it–at the end,, we’ll have a bunch of things we can post up and it’ll be a very cool social experience.” On his experience with the event as a whole, Youssif said that he’s “very happy this is happening. I think Reed in general doesn’t have much events for specifically students of color and it’s also a nice opportunity for us to show off our student group because we’re extremely underrepresented at Reed. I’m happy people are showing up and having a good time.”

At the South Asian Union (SAU) table, club members served chai and filter coffee to students. The Quest spoke to club member Druti Pandya, who explained how both drinks are loved in South Asian communities. She also commented on how “It just feels like home, and we hope that people at Reed feel like home within our club too.” Pandya was “so excited to taste all the new foods and experience all these different cultures. There’s so many things lined up with the entertainment and food, people have posters and fun facts and stuff. It’s so amazing, so great, I’m glad that it’s happening.”