Margaret Cartee

Alicia Ran (11), Mina Okamoto (12), Yifan Li (11) and Harshini Chaturvedula (12) smile and pose for a photo together. Many students wore traditional attire from their cultures to celebrate Culture Day.

Upper school students and faculty visited student-run culture booths inside the Auxiliary Gym and tasted various cuisines from food trucks outside the Rothschild Performing Arts Center for Wednesday’s Culture Week activities. 

The 15 booths featured posters, traditional snacks and artifacts from various cultures. At the booths, student organizers dressed up in cultural attire shared their culture with students and faculty. Visitors tried ube desserts and pastries from the Philippines booth, received Henna designs at the India booth and learned about the Korean alphabet at the Korea stations, among other interactive activities.

Senior Katelyn Hsu, who helped run the Taiwan booth, brought stamps and stickers from a recent trip to Taiwan to showcase Taiwanese designs. The booth also offered boba, scallion pancakes, Taiwanese sausages and tangyuan, a traditional Taiwanese dessert.

“When I was in elementary school and middle school, I never knew anyone else who was Taiwanese,” Katelyn said. “The booth at least gives me an opportunity to know other Taiwanese people and share stories [about] our trips back to Taiwan, or the stereotypical Taiwanese things. And some of my friends don’t know what I eat, so I get a chance to show them.”

As the Student Diversity Coalition continues to expand Culture Week within and across campuses, students share more about their own culture and engage in other cultures. Sikh Student Association co-president Sidak Sanghari (11), who helped manage the Punjab booth, highlighted the increase in interaction compared to last year’s event.

“It was really awesome,” Sidak said. “We had a booth last year, but this year, I just got so much more support from everyone. We also started our Sikh Student Association this year, and having people on that who also identify as Punjabi help out with this was really nice, and it was such a big community.”

In addition to the increasing prominence of Culture Week in the Harker community, student and faculty engagement and reactions to the event continues to improve. Muslim Student Association president Minal Jalil (10) recognized the enthusiasm from students running the booths and the positive impact of this event on the community.  

“While visiting each booth, you could see the excitement on everybody’s faces because they took pride in sharing their culture with the student body,” Minal said. “I think an event like this reaffirms the bonds within our community and connects the students on a deeper level. It was really gratifying to see other students interact with our booth.”

Students had the opportunity to get lunch from four different food trucks from 11:45 a.m. to 1:25 p.m. The trucks offered Mexican food from Wonk’s Street Tacos, Indian food from Lalkhan’s Indian Express, Hawaiian food from Fresh Catch Poke and Salvadorian food from Pupusa Lady. Students were given wristbands and tickets to order food and each grade was assigned a 15-minute time slot to receive their tickets. The trucks ran out of food before all students were able to get food, leading some to eat regular lunch from Manzanita Hall.

Leana Zhou (10), who visited the culture booths, reflects on how the cultural events expanded her perspective of the world.

“I think the events today definitely help us learn about the different cultures and show a lot of where each culture is special,” Leana Zhou (10) said. “Like, ‘Oh, I didn’t even know that this famous celebrity was from this country,’ or ‘Oh, I didn’t realize how bomb the Filipino food was.’ It definitely was really cool seeing everyone dressed up and proud of their culture.”