By Alyssa Lukpat, staff writer
Hundreds of students celebrated international diversity in the West Village F Visitor Center Monday night at World Cafe, a pop-up cafe promoting cultures from across the world.
The event, hosted by the Northeastern Office of Global Services, or OGS, the Resident Student Association, or RSA, and Housing and Residential Life was a part of Carnevale, OGS’ month-long series of cultural celebrations. The cafe had tables set up around the Visitor Center, where students decorated mugs, answered world trivia questions and played international games like Mancala and Carrom, a South Asian version of pool.
Devina Raithatha, a fifth-year business major and student support and programming specialist at OGS, helped organize the event.
“We’re initiating international conversations through literature, newspapers, board games and activities from different cultures,” Raithatha said. “Our goal is to increase cultural competency and create an inclusive community.”
20 percent of Northeastern’s undergraduate students are international students, according to Northeastern’s admissions page, which is the 10th largest percentage of universities across the country.
“We want to increase the awareness of the number of international students on campus and the way the global community affects Northeastern,” said Raithatha, who is an international student from Kenya.
In one activity, students received treats such as donuts, coffee and tea if they could identify various national flags.
Event organizers hoped to teach students about different cultures, said Gretchen Elder, a second-year communication studies major and RSA’s co-assistant vice president for programming and collaboration.
“It’s important to understand the difference between cultures and talk to people of different cultures to build awareness,” Elder said. “People get to walk away with a great Union Square Donut and coffee and a better picture of the cultures represented here.”
Resident assistants, or RAs, from Housing and Residential Life brought their residents to World Cafe to learn about the cultures of their neighbors. Tyra Dukes, a third-year nursing major and RA in West Village, wanted to initiate conversations between international and American students.
“In West Village, with the amount of N.U.in kids and students with international backgrounds, this event connects them to domestic students,” Dukes said. “People tend to clique up and stick to what they know, and that limits their Northeastern experience because there are so many cultures to see.”
Many students, including Sougata Dafader, came to the event to learn about different cultures.
“I thought it would be great to learn about some other cultures apart from the ones that we come from,” said Dafader, a first-year computer science master’s student. “In the U.S., we experience a mix of different cultures, so this was something interesting to experience.”
Some students, like second-year chemical engineering major Mohsen Alqunaie, said they just came to World Cafe for the free food, but learned something new from drinking the variety of international beverages.
“There’s a lot of teas and coffees from all over the world and not just from one place,” he said. “I learned we all contribute to one art called tea and coffee.”
Students also learned more about the international media. After reading books and newspapers from countries like Colombia, Greece, Nigeria, Germany, Saudi Arabia and Israel, Dukes saw how the media operates differently in each country.
“A U.S. Gucci ad is so different from a Gucci ad from Amsterdam or Spain,” Dukes said. “We’re very America-centric and think America is the standard, and this opens our mind to different cultures.”
Ultimately, World Cafe organizers hoped to bring attention to the cultures represented on Northeastern’s campus.
“I’ve faced challenges as an international student on campus, and I wanted to remove some of the barriers to engagement between domestic and international students and emphasize the importance of global community,” Raithatha said.
