Community Celebrates Lunar New Year
By the 145th Executive Board
On Jan. 21, Dining Services, the Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA), parent volunteers, and Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) student leaders collaborated to host a Lunar New Year celebration in Elm Dining Hall.
Along with the hot food line, the celebration featured over 5,000 handmade dumplings, which were prepared by a group of 30 parent volunteers, as well as various Asian snacks which were sent in by parents. OMA also created a compilation of videos that wished the students good luck in the new year, which were submitted by parents.
Dean of Multicultural Affairs Sherry Hernandez explained the planning process for the celebration: “Ms. Tinsley, who is our Asian Student Program Coordinator scheduled and booked January 21st as the event date at the start of the school year. So already in the fall, Ms. Tinsley had begun the process of securing the date and getting our key partners on board, which included Dining Services, Student Activities, Institutional Advancement, who is our connection for family engagement such as the parent volunteers, and then lastly the OMA team.”
This year, the tradition of having parent volunteers hand-make dumplings for the celebration returned. While this aspect of the dinner was absent from last year’s Lunar New Year celebration due to COVID-19, Hernandez explained the coordination for such an event. “Back during Family Weekend, I had a nice chat with a few of the parents who have been a part of the dumpling making process over the years. People were getting excited about planning for Lunar New Year and the possibility of, once again, making dumplings on campus, so already there was a lot of energy around it… One of our amazing dining team staff members, Ellen, led the dumpling-making with 30 parents on campus. It was so heartwarming to see that we have so many parents who want to take the time to make these very intricate time-consuming dumplings as a way to share their love for the community,” she said.
Some of the parent volunteers shared their experiences preparing the dumplings. “The Chinese parents WeChat group assembled over 30 parents and arrived at school early in the morning at eight to start the task of making over 5,000 dumplings. The parents talked to both the kitchen staff and OMA. The head chef taught the parents how to use the kitchen equipment, chop up vegetables fast, and also helped in the process. We used both 50 pounds of pork, 50 pounds of beef, and numerous amounts of other vegetables. We also collaborated with OMA to arrange the set of decorations and other treats. Overall, it was a great opportunity to have the parents get together and create a stronger bond,” Shannon Xue, parent of upper Debbie Ang said.
Wen Shen, parent of upper Alaysha Zhang said, “I was very appreciative of the school for including various Asian cultures’ input and hope that this tradition continues.”
AAPI Student Leaders also played a large part in the decoration process. Co-head of Chinese Student Organization (CSO) Eric Wu explained the process. “A lot of the planning happened during our AAPI OMA club head meeting that we had a week ago. All of the AAPI co-heads got together and brainstormed ideas and decorations that we wanted for this event,” Wu said. “For the actual decorating, we had a span of two hours where all of the co-heads came together and we gathered the materials that either the parents or other clubs provided. The Dining Services staff helped a lot, especially with the lanterns and some other decorations. They didn’t want us climbing way too high or anything else, so they were also super helpful.”
Wu continued, sharing some of his expectations for the event. “My hopes were just that people would enjoy the day, and even for those who don’t usually celebrate it, I wanted them to observe the celebration and learn a bit more about these cultures and have a good time. I think that those expectations were definitely met,” he said. “Overall, people seemed to be having a good time and I think that was super important. And you know, even for the people who usually do celebrate, I saw them having food together and talking about their traditions, so it really felt like a home-away-from home environment.”
Apart from the Saturday celebration in Elm, CSO held its own Lunar New Year party at the Elizabeth Phillips Academy Center on Friday, Jan. 20. Senior and co-head of CSO Tony Cai touched on this. “We had dumplings, rice cakes, and other snacks. So that was a really lovely occasion to get the mood ready for New Year’s Eve. And we also had a lot of fun decorating the lanterns at Elm the next day. Doing all these really made me feel proud of our cultural heritage.”
Hernandez closed off with some reflection on this year’s celebration, and some hopes for future ones. “Despite everything that’s happening on campus, there was a lot of thoughtfulness to how to hold this event so that it was as inviting for the community as possible. And we hope we really delivered on that. We’re certainly happy to talk with anyone who has feedback or suggestions for how we may do it next year,” she concluded.
