Last in a string of outstanding events, the Associated Students of West Valley College (ASWVC) recently held a Diversity Fair to celebrate and embrace the various cultures represented within our student body. With a mix of local dishes and engaging activities, the fair brought a year’s worth of events to a close in the best way possible—using the students’ voices.
A total of five organizations were present at Diversity Fair: Pride Center, BSU (Black Student Union), APISC (Asian Pacific Islander Student Caucus), Latinx, and MESA (Middle Eastern Student Association). We interviewed each of them to hear their thoughts:
How do you feel about your culture being represented at Diversity Fair?
Matthew Hunt (Pride Center Ambassador): I’m really happy to see the Pride Center be represented here at the Diversity Fair. With all of the different genders and sexualities that we have, it fills me with joy to see everyone coming over and interacting with the queer community like this.
Aman Eshete (BSU, Vice President): I feel good about it, but it’s hard because in BSU there are so many cultures that are radically different from each other, so it’s hard to find a way to have everyone’s culture shown, so we stuck to the general umbrella one (soul food), which is good, except we don’t really get to show all the other cultures that we represent.
Amy Nguyen (APISC, President): I feel very proud just being able to see my culture be represented at Diversity Fair. There’s something so empowering about being able to celebrate who you are, your background, and taking pride in your culture.
Sebastian Garcia (Latinx, President): It feels very welcoming, it’s also just really enriching to educate others about not just how we celebrate, how we dress, but also what kind of foods we eat. Regardless of where you’re from and whatever culture you come from, I think the one thing that really connects us all is food and having a good time together through music or talking.
Nava Moallemi (MESA, Co-President): I’m really proud to be a part of Diversity Fair. Being a new club especially, I am really happy to be here to represent the Middle Eastern community since there wasn’t a place for Middle Eastern students to come together prior. Iran’s been around forever, but not many people know what the flag is, and it’s really great to have people come and questioning, because it brings awareness to not only our country, but the Middle East as a whole because there are a lot of cultural affairs and global issues going on in that part of the world
Sahar Lalehparvar (MESA, Co-President): We’ve talked amongst each other about how on Instagram you’ll see people post about movements, but you’ll rarely see anything pertaining to the Middle East. And if somebody does post something, 99% of the time they are Middle Eastern, so it just goes to show that non-Middle Eastern people don’t usually know anything that’s going on because their issues are’t really talked about, so I think as a club it’s really important to discuss all these issues and bring them to light because society has almost made them taboo.
Hanna Rezvani (MESA, Vice President): The Middle East and North Africa are heavily ignored and kind of pushed to the side, so I think it’s really important that we make it clear that we’re here to stay.
Do you have any plans in the future to spread awareness and educate people about your organization?
Hunt (Pride Center): There’s a lot of things in the works to get the Pride Center a little bit out there more, I’m not sure if I’m allowed to disclose any of them. But, we have a lot of stuff coming, and watch out for the Pride Center next fall!
Eshete (BSU): Starting next semester we plan on having a lot more meetings…reaching a bigger audience, and letting them know what we’re about.
Nguyen (APISC): So now that we’ve expanded our board, we’re planning on gaining more members to possibly establish an activities committee so that we can plan events that would be centered around charities, and focused on helping our community.
Garcia (Latinx): As being the Latinx president for the fall and spring, I think spreading awareness and not just creating events but also having a safe space for everyone to make sure that they feel welcome just because I know that home isn’t always the best choice or the best place to be.
Moallemi (MESA): We are a new club, we started this semester, so right now we’re focused on getting our name out there, and getting students to join. We want people to be prideful of their culture and heritage especially with the Middle East, because we’re [the board] Middle Eastern, we have a lot of pride when it comes to our culture, and going forward, we’re definitely going to be a part of a lot of events and host events of our own hopefully that will allow us to spread the word about MESA.
What has your club done at West Valley so far?
Hunt (Pride Center): So far, we’re known for having a lot of queer movie nights. Every Thursday at 2 PM we’ll put on a queer-focused movie. This week, we’re going to watch But I’m a Cheerleader, which is about a lesbian couple. We want to open up our work with the Health Center, and work on getting our safe-sex things out, we’re very passionate about bringing safety to everything, especially sexual relations, and just overall spreading a good, happy message. We want to make sure everyone’s feeling good, and having fun.
Eshete (BSU): We mainly had meetings last semester…we had a couple events…like for Thanksgiving we had a big family potluck where everyone brought food and we all ate and it was really great! Towards finals, we had study sessions where we offered foods like hot chocolate, popcorn, and candy. We had professors that partnered with UMOJA come out and help people with studying for exams and writing essays. This semester, we had a dance event where we got to show more of the cultures that I was talking about earlier that we don’t really get to show, and we had some of our cultural foods as well.
Nguyen (APISC): At the beginning of the year, we did have a boba party to get to know everyone. We also had a dumpling making competition, and that was also pretty exciting. We also had a collaboration event with ASWVC to celebrate the welcoming of spring, Holi, and we had a really cool movie night and just got a chance to hangout with our members, and grow our community that way.
Garcia (Latinx): We have raised awareness of having undocumented students, coloring, flower making for Día de Muertos, and just making fun events and sharing our culture, coming together and just having a great time.
Moallemi (MESA): Sahar and I are actually a part of ASWVC’s Senate, so we have taken action to make it known to the people of ASWVC that we are a new club on campus, and we’ve been very happy to work with them because they’ve helped us so much. Unfortunately, since we have only been active for one semester there wasn’t much we could do, but we have put up posters, we always advertise, we talk to as many people as we can, and we’re very present on campus to get people to join our club and help us grow.