The Cultural Festival, organized by the International Student Council (ISC), annually gathers all the ethnic clubs on campus under one roof for a full day of activities. All international clubs display items from their culture, deliver live performances, and offer samples of ethnic foods.
Tom Thomsen was one of the key organizers of this event. He is the International Student Advisor and the Associate Dean of Student Life. Thomsen explains that this was the tenth time WPI had hosted the event under his supervision, but that it had been done a couple of times before his arrival at WPI.
For him, the Cultural Festival "is a chance for the international students of WPI to share their culture with the rest of the WPI community and the Worcester community at large."
This is the second time the ISC hosted the Cultural Festival on a Saturday. It used to be held on Wednesday, but was found to be too stressful for students. On the other hand, "we made it more of a family day and it seems to be working," Thomsen explained.
"As usual, the international students have done an excellent job of putting together the performances, the exhibits, the food... It is a very educational day and a fun day that involves a lot of work, and a lot of students who have worked hard to put this together," he said.
Manuel Van Oordt, who is the President of the ISC, commented on how hard they worked, "we started planning this in early C term. We got all the groups together just before Spring Break, and started working on the final details in early D term. The amount of effort varies with the different clubs. I would imagine that the clubs that performed and put together a display spent a good couple of weeks."
Both Thomsen and Van Oordt felt pleased with the results. "We had a very good turnout, not only students, but faculty, staff and WPI neighbors," Van Oordt said. The audience was mixed, ranging from high school students to senior citizens, and some of the people even came from as far away as Boston. Flor de Maria, 17, Yadira Lisset, 19, and Carla Sarrias, 17, attend Quincy High School in Boston, and traveled here to enjoy the festival. "We want to do something like this at our school so we came to learn and get ideas," De Maria said.
Brenda Caraballo, 15, from neighboring Doherty Memorial High School was also in the audience. "I came to learn about different cultures," she emphasized.
Members of the student body also stopped by. Leon De Oliveira, '95, enjoyed the live performances the most: "I was on Campus and I heard it was going on, and I had been here a couple of years ago and I thought it was quite interesting." Eric Person, '98, thinks that the whole WPI community has a lot to gain from events like this: "I came to WPI because of the international mix of students. I think this is an excellent way of showing the community what a great mix it is."
It is such a great mix, that even some Alumni showed up. Sarah Kazmi, '94, was a member of the ISC board and a member of the Indian Student Organization. She said that after four years of doing it she missed being part of the festival. For Carmen Arozemena, 91, it represented a great opportunity to see most of her old international friends.
Students from Clark and Assumption also took advantage of the festival. Luisa Lazzaro, a sophomore at Assumption, commented that " it was much better that what I thought it would be." For Lenir Beltran, however, it represented a great opportunity to study outside the classroom; being an international studies major, she came "to learn about people from different cultures."
Throughout the day live performances and dances entertained everybody, and when the show was not on stage, the audience was free to walk around and observe all the displays or taste the different types of food. Even the performers stayed to watch other performances. Francesca Escoto, '98, one of the performers for the Hispanic Student Association said, "this is a great opportunity for WPI to learn cultural awareness and learn it from people from those countries."
Bland Addison, a professor on the Humanities department agrees with her. "This Cultural Festival is like taking a course on global history as far as I'm concerned. The opportunity to learn a little bit about their customs, their food and their history is tremendous." Barbara McCarthy, also a professor from the Humanities department, liked the idea of having a Cultural Festival. "I think it gives the students an opportunity to demonstrate something of their own culture that is not American, and show the American students that life is very different outside the United States."
Performers, audience members and the organizers were happy with this year's Cultural Festival, knowing that it demonstrates that diversity at WPI is not a politically correct word, but a fact. And that is what the Cultural Festival is all about: sharing and learning from other cultures, because as, Barbara McCarthy puts it, "I love to think of myself as a citizen of the world."