First annual Culture Fest packs campus center

Over a thousand students filed through the Mayer Campus Center this weekend to join a celebration of international food, music, and dance at the first annual Culture Festival.

The Saturday festival, which has been in the works for most of the year, was originally planned to take place outdoors but was moved inside due to the threat of rain.

The coordinators had enough food and t-shirts for over 700 people, but a crowd of an estimated 1,200 surpassed any estimates. "It's amazing," Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senator Cho Ling said. "There are so many people here."

Programming Board co-chair Caroline Postel was also excited by the turn out. "I can honestly say that as co-chair of Programming Board, this is the best event I've ever programmed."

"This is the biggest collaboration between all student groups on campus," Ling said.

A committee of five students had been planning the event since October, but the idea for this event had been around for even longer. "I've been waiting for an event like this for three years," Director of the Office of Student Activities Jodie Nealley said "The biggest obstacle in this entire thing was getting all 23 groups interested to participate, but that's the success of it, too.

TCU Senator Dave Baumwoll acknowledged that these clubs operate on busy schedules and have been very cautious about using their funds for the event in the past. Baumwoll said that the Senate's diversity fund helped support the event, and reduce the financial burden on the individual groups.

This year, the clubs were given funding out of the University's diversity fund.

Postel praised her fellow four organizers for their organization, planning, and motivation "There was a determination between the five of us. There was no way that we were going to not put on this event," she said.

Baumwoll brought up the idea for the Culture Festival earlier in the fall and approached the other committee members, Ling and TCU Senator Rafi Goldberg, Postel, and Tufts University Spirit Coalition co-chair Sarita Parekh.

"The Culture Festival is the kind of event that should bring together the entire Tufts community," Goldberg said. "We're hoping that students will enjoy spending part of the afternoon immersed in some of the many experiences that different cultures contribute to the Tufts campus."

With 23 cultural organizations holding booths and various student performances which focused on cultural music and dancing, the event required teamwork. "It's a nice cooperation of the international population here," freshman Nicolle Kuritsky said. Senior Theofanis Exadaletylos agreed calling the event "the best example of diversity on campus."

The event required cross-cultural cooperation, as well as offering a chance for clubs to gain recognition, generate good public relations, and hopefully gain a larger recruitment pool next year.

"It is this type of event that we need for people to truly appreciate the amount of diversity on campus," said Ling. "I feel like the amount of diversity is underestimated sometimes."

There was an educational component to the event as well. Each group was asked to contribute some information about them self in a booklet that would be put together and made available to students While the booklet was informative, many students chose to focus on the food that each group served. "It's good to try new things," freshman Drew Shimomura said.

The food and the free t-shirts handed out were incentives for the student body, as was the lack of an admissions charge. "We're hoping to reach students who are less perceptive to cultural events," Ling said.

"It seems like a good idea. I would come next year," said Shimomura. Sophomore Negar Razavi agreed. "This is awesome. They should do things like this more often, where all groups come together for one interest," she said.