Cultures on the Quad offers students a ‘sample of the world’

Hundreds of students and faculty showed up to Cultures on the Quad hungry.

Not just to try different foods from over 10 different cultures that were represented at the annual event, but also to experience cross-cultural interaction. 

“It’s a sample of the world,” said event chairperson and Department Chair of Spanish Language, Literature and Culture, Gail Bulman.

Communications and rhetorical sciences sophomore Bree-Lauder Williams said events like this can help raise awareness and create unity on a campus with over 4,000 international undergraduate students.

“It’s important to be able to recognize and empathize with different cultures,” Lauder-Williams said. “If people would just stop and look around, they would realize we have a lot more commonalities than we have differences.”

Coming from a household with a French background, Lauder-Williams said it’s always been normal for her to have friends with diverse cultures. She attributes it to the diversity of experience in her hometown. Lauder-Williams also said she thinks students’ family culture impacts their willingness to open themselves up to new cultures.

“I’m from New York City, so I grew up around different languages, and I went to an international boarding school,” Lauder-Williams said. “I feel like I’m more willing to learn new languages because I have friends who speak different languages.”

Bulman said it’s a college student’s duty to interact with new and unfamiliar cultures to gain cultural awareness. 

“We hope that we can introduce people to the beauty of other places in the world and other cultures and languages,” Bulman said. 

In addition to 14 different cultures and languages, the linguistics, religion and African-American studies departments all tabled at the event.

“Some of these cultures have tensions in the real world,” Bulman said. “We really value being together and welcoming and celebrating each other.”

However, some of the represented areas of study have tension on campus.

After 20 majors in the College of Arts and Sciences paused admissions in September, Department of Religion chairperson Gareth Fisher accepted the offer to table at Cultures on the Quad. Bulman said the event could help promote the various majors SU previously offered as they aim to continue education on religious history.

“Intolerance is always is always rooted in ignorance,” Fisher said. “That’s something that as educators should be our mission to help to correct, and the study of religion is an important part of that.”

Fisher referenced the recent on-campus incident — in which two students were arrested for perpetrating anti-semitic hate toward a Jewish fraternity — as an example of the mesh between culture and religion in the real world.

Fisher said he is open to having difficult discussions about the realities of religious and cultural tensions, and he hopes to reverse the connotation of religion back to a positive one.

“(An event like this) opens you up to understanding of global cultures, the basis of a lot of political, historical, economic and cultural systems all across the world,” Fisher said. “We really want to communicate to students that taking religion classes is a really excellent way to learn about different cultures in different civilizations all across the world, not just today in the world, but also in history as well.”

The annual event is now in its 16th year, and featured Chinese, Russian and Hebrew performers

“Even if you’re not in a language class, you should still come because the least you’re gonna get out of it is good food and a good time,” Lauder-Williams said.