The Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate Outreach Committee last Thursday evening hosted the fifth annual Student Leadership Dinner at the 51 Winthrop Street Function Hall.
The event's purpose is to present a forum for discussion among a diverse set of student groups, according to TCU President Joe Thibodeau.
"[The dinner] is to celebrate the work that groups have already put in for the year ... [and] an opportunity for the leaders of the groups to come together and to have a good meal and to celebrate what they've done," Thibodeau, a senior, said. "It is also for groups to connect."
Senator Brian Tesser, who organized the event as the chair of the Student Outreach Committee, said he hoped student groups would use the dinner as a time to discuss ways to collaborate. Tesser was also pleased with the attendance, which was higher than expected.
"The capacity that we could hit was 150 [people] ... and we had 120 to 130, which is pretty high," Tesser, a sophomore, said. "We were thinking we were going to get around 100, so last minute we had a lot of really late RSVPs, which was totally fine, because the more people the better."
Since most groups sent two representatives, Tesser estimated that about 50 groups were in attendance at the dinner.
After all the group members had arrived and had taken their seats, Thibodeau and Tesser made brief introductory speeches explaining the purpose of the evening. Both said they were looking forward the potential results and benefits of the dinner.
"There are so many great passionate people here at Tufts, and we don't often get the opportunity to talk to each other," Thibodeau said.
The various groups were each assigned to tables by type. One table, for example, hosted student religious groups, while another hosted groups concerned with intentional affairs.
Tesser believed that sorting groups by areas of common interest allowed group leaders to collaborate more effectively.
"I spoke to some of the people sitting at the sorority table, and they said that they were able to talk, [and] I know that the Leonard Carmichael Society was at a table with a lot of the fraternities, so they were able to talk about different ways to integrate Greek life with community service," he said.
Graham Goudeau of the Tufts Futurism Society, a group that discusses the issues that arise with the advancement of technology, explained that the group was satisfied with the dinner discussion and hoped to expand their activities as a result.
"This is a cool event. We got to meet other groups, [and] it seems they are interested in the future," Goudeau, a freshman, said.
Members of Alliance Linking Leaders in Education and the Services (ALLIES) explained that the dinner gave them a great opportunity to meet other student organizations. Brian Pollock, a sophomore, said that ALLIES is hoping to attract a more diverse body of participants by taking a multi-disciplinary approach to civil-military relationships. He hoped the dinner would allow the group to explain its purpose to more people.
Tesser also mentioned a few potential logistical improvements that the Student Outreach Committee could make to next year's dinner.
"One of the things we could do better in terms of planning is making sure that everyone who's coming is fully aware of when it is, and making sure that people are excited to come," he said.
Tesser said that this year, the committee had difficulty assigning student organizations to tables. In the future, he hopes to ask groups about what they are expecting from the dinner, so that they can be placed with like-minded people.
After the event concluded, Tesser expressed optimism about future Student Leadership Dinners.
"Hopefully we can find things that worked, [and] do those again, and things that didn't work we can definitely tweak for future years," he said.
