ASB ‘s collaborations are integrated into multicultural week
Shayna Kapadia | Staff Writer
March 24th to 28th marked this year’s Multicultural week which received various changes from ASB that incorporated a wider variety of cultures using the sophomore benchmark project and created a more interactive environment by adding the cultural fair at the end of the week instead of the usual assembly.
ASB wanted to make Multicultural Week more unified in contrast to previous years where different sections of the school represented different countries.
“Usually there are dress up days, but this year we took them out because we didn’t want this to be like the usual spirit weeks,” explains Elise Logan, clubs commissioner. “Instead we wanted it to be a showcase for different cultures and religions and nationalities as a whole, rather than separating them.”
In order to accomplish this, the ASB team in charge of Multicultural week had Mr. Vucurevich’s four sophomore classes create informational posters on their WIP countries.
“The basic idea of it was you’re doing that country [for WIP], so you should already know everything about it,” said sophomore Joseph Roszel who’s WIP country is Brazil.
Utilizing the WIP benchmark project not only provided more decorations, but it allowed a vast array of countries to be represented.
“Usually what you get every year is the same couple of countries that everybody already knows about,” observed Mr. V.
In addition, ASB decided to transform the usual assembly at the end of Multicultural week to a fair in which the various cultural clubs and students set up booths representing different parts of their culture.
“We wanted multicultural week to be more interactive with the students.” says junior Kavitta Ghai, clubs assistant. “We tried to include the performances into it so we were still able to showcase the amazing talent at Irvington.”
French Club, Fencing Club, Muslim Student Association Club, MECHA, and calligraphy club were just a few of the fifteen booths that existed at the fair.
“Multicultural week was just a time where all the cultural clubs came together to show the school body all the heritage and culture of their country!” exclaimed junior Monica Opara, President of the Black Student Union. “For my club, it was exemplifying the beauty of Africa and all the color and excitement it holds.”
The fair took place on Friday, March 28th in the cafeteria where dances were performed each period throughout the day.
“BSU did a dance for the fair which consisted of Nigerian hip hop and ‘soca’ music” said Opara. Dances from Ritmo Latio were also performed by Love Alvarez, Luis Domantay, and others.
Also placed in the cafeteria was a map of the world where students could write their country of origin on a post-it note and place it on the map.
“It was just a nice visual to showcase all the different cultures and nationalities our school represents,” commented Logan.
Along with the conflicts encountered when trying to plan Espanolandia and Club Rush in the same week, some of the clubs canceled last minute making the fair smaller than expected.
“Next year we are hoping to get more participation and make the fair grow bigger with more booths and more performances” noted Logan.
Despite this, ASB feels that the week was a success. “It was just our first year changing multicultural week so of course it had its bumps in the road but overall I think it went well,” said Ghai. “Our main goal is to have future Clubs Commissioners carry on the tradition of the Multicultural Fair and make it way better than we did.”
