“This is the first time International Day will be held at Lafayette and it will be a day where everybody can come together. Lafayette is really diverse ethnically and we want people to come together to celebrate those differences and cultures,” sophomore Akil Rajan said.

International Day is a new event that will take place April 6 from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. and was made to spread awareness about the different aspects of each culture. Each volunteer is asked to make a presentation or stage event about a culture, country or ethnic group in a unique way. This event is free and will be located in the Commons. 

“International Day is essentially where all ethnicities, culture groups can come together and really share what their culture is really about. Because at school you always hear about ethnicity and cultures but you never really know or understand them,” freshman Sarah Mu said. “We just wanna make sure this is an interactive activity where everyone can learn about new things and just try to understand each other.  Just letting people have more exposure to the world as a whole because the United States is not just one specific group of people but rather as it is often described, a melting pot of ethnicities.”

To Mu, being able to explore cultures other than a person’s own is an important way to remain open-minded.

“I think it’d be a really unique experience and opportunity, especially since we live, literally in the middle of the United States. I feel like there aren’t a lot of opportunities to really explore the world and most of the time we don’t have a lot of resources that allow us to do that. So I feel like at a school event such as International Day, where we’re all students learning together, is a good experience and opportunity for people to get to know more international worldwide stuff,” Mu said.

Rajan was the one who had originally brought the idea of making International Day a reality.

“I thought of International Day because my elementary school actually did something similar to this and we felt certain cultures and ethnic backgrounds weren’t as represented at school. So we realized that Lafayette’s environment and atmosphere needed to change and we think this is a great way to do so,” Rajan said.

With International Day, Rajan also hopes to educate students about cultures and reduce the use of racial stereotypes, insults and violence.

“I believe that the root of discrimination is in the schooling system. And if we can cut it off there itself, then it won’t grow into actual society. So if we can make everybody aware and accepting of other people’s culture and background. Hopefully it can stop insults and or hate crimes, people wouldn’t be calling Muslims terrorists and stuff like that,” Rajan said.

Freshman Akiko Field shares a similar opinion.

“I believe it will open new perspectives for people, because though people do not actively try to, they tend to be a little ignorant or think stereotypically because they don’t know too much about it. I feel like it kind of opens up a new perspective and encourages others to be like, ‘Oh, I want to go out and see this, do that and this.’ To create more of an open-minded viewpoint. Because a lot of people tend to be close-minded or see what they see, see what they wanna believe, or see what they were shown to see,” Field said.

She also encourages people to come and learn about cultures and connect more with the Lafayette community.

“I would like to see people showing up cause they wanna see they’re excited, or curious and not just attending there cause they were told to. We wanna see people actually interested, people should also go for the crowd and energy. It’s gonna be so fun, there’s gonna be so many events going on,” Field said.

For people like sophomore CJ Woode, who will give a presentation about Ghana, International Day is more about expressing himself and his culture.

“I like presenting things about my country and my culture. And I like telling other people why I am the way I am, and I feel like my culture is a really big part of that. And I feel like many people feel the same way,” Woode said, “To me, it’s not just international and it’s not just the incorporation of nationalities and ethnicities all around the world, but it’s about the culture. Inside every country there are many cultures, countries could be split, countries could have multiple different traditions and cultures then. So what that means to me is they’re bringing out and exposing some of those aspects of cultures that we can celebrate, that we can display and show other people that they can come and see like this is how we do things here, this is how we’ve grown, this is who I am.”