Students honor cultures in week-long celebration

From Nov. 6 to Nov. 13, CSB+SJU is celebrating their 25th annual Festival of Cultures. This week-long schedule of events is organized by Multicultural Student Services and features a series of performances and panels to celebrate cultural diversity at CSB+SJU.

The process of planning this year’s festival began last April, as the Multicultural Student Services team began outlining events for the week.

“Once the semester started, we worked with students to fill in the gaps with programs they wanted to see,” said Malik Stewart, director of Multicultural Student Services, via email. “Several of our original plans had to change, but that also led to new ideas that we were able to incorporate.”

Multicultural Student Services are the main organizers of the festival events, in collaboration with other departments and organizations at CSB+SJU.

“Our role is to help coordinate, promote and execute the events,” Stewart said. “Members of the MSS student team will be at every event.”

In addition to helping run the events, students also play a key role in the planning of the festival.

“Students planned the Interfaith event and Beyond Borders, and ACA [Archipelago Caribbean Association] were key partners for ‘It’s a Bahamian Thing,’” Stewart said.

The “It’s a Bahamian Thing” event, held this past Monday, allowed students to attend a discussion about the century-old connection between CSB+SJU and The Bahamas.

“Over 1,600 students from The Bahamas have passed through these campuses,” said Brittany Merritt Nash, a history professor at CSB+SJU who moderated the panel.

The event featured five current Bahamian students, all of whom are actively involved at CSB+SJU in some capacity, who began by explaining the adjustments and challenges experienced since beginning their time at CSB+SJU.

“It’s been a challenge, being the only Bahamian student or one of the only ones in a particular major, having to feel a little more alone in that while you’re working through stuff,” said Jervon Sands, SJU senior and an international student mentor.

The panelists also explained other culture shocks they’ve experienced on campus, such as an introduction to the sometimes passive aggressive “Minnesota Nice,” and alternatively some more harmful microaggressions.

“People would say stuff like, ‘Oh your English is so good!’ when English is the only language that we speak in The Bahamas, or people would mockingly copy our accents,” CSB senior Andrenique Rolle said.

Rolle is the CSB Senate president, and she described her efforts to try and combat those challenges and make her own place on campus despite them.

“This school is only my school because I made it that way,” Rolle said. “I wanted to create a space in which future Bahamian students can come and realize that they might actually belong here.”

Despite the deep history between The Bahamas and CSB+SJU, the panelists expressed their difficulty fully feeling like the schools are their own.

“When I hear the question ‘Do Bahamians belong here?,’ I feel like yes and no,” said Teniesha Ferguson, CSB senior, who is an AIM scholar and mentor. “Yes, in the sense that when you come here, you already have a community of people, but no in the sense that now that I know it’s 100 years of people being here, there’s no way we still run into the same problems.”

Christianna Wallace, CSB junior and president of the Afro STEM club, explained her decision to choose to make the best of her experience at CSB+SJU.

“Sometimes I feel like I don’t even belong, like I wake up and I look out the window and think, ‘what am I doing here?’ but at the same time I realize that you have to make this for you. You have to use the resources around you,” she said.

To these students, protecting and celebrating Bahamian culture in any way they can helps them find joy and purpose on campus, and they encourage others to do the same.

“I’m trying to not so much let my culture be diminished here on campus, but try and help people see my culture and learn from it and better this campus in some ways,” said Antonio Thompson, SJU sophomore and resident assistant. “I’m trying to make my home on campus.”

Students who attended this discussion found themselves presented with an opportunity to engage in the experiences of others.

“It’s to learn more about culture and identities and things happening on campus,” CSB first-year Marisa LaPlante said.

CSB sophomore Celine Ferguson is also Bahamian and hopes those who attended the event gained a new perspective on the community around them.

“I hope that they got to learn a little bit more about the Bahamian community and how a lot of Bahamian students feel being on campus and so far away from home,” she said.

The Festival of Cultures featured other events intended to expand the understanding of cultures in the CSB+SJU community, such as the Interfaith event, the “Beyond Borders” discussion about immigration and a reading by Dakota author Diane Wilson from her book “The Seed Keeper.” In Stewart’s opinion, the best way for students to get involved with the remaining events in the festival is to connect with others.

“Obviously, attend the events, but while you’re there, talk to someone you don’t know. Invite them to sit with you. Laugh and dance together,” Stewart said. “This whole week is about celebrating the diversity in our community, and it’s really important that students take advantage of these opportunities while they’re here.”

Festival events continue into the weekend with a presentation on Thursday by artist Bobby Marines called ‘CottonPicker,’ a performance by Grammy-nominated Tiempo Libre on Friday and the annual Student Showcase and Bilingual Student Mass on Saturday and Sunday, respectively. Full details on festival events can be found on the Multicultural Center’s Instagram page @msscsbsju.