The Campolindo’s 2023 Cultural Fair occurred on Wednesday November 15 in the big gym. It had 14 clubs participate, garnering many students for the purpose of promoting diversity and belonging in Campo’s community.
Members of Campo’s Diversity Equity Inclusion Belonging (DEIB) leadership committee worked hard in order to make the Cultural Fair an overall interactive experience for the whole student body this year. “We wanted to set up this event because we wanted to help create a link between culture clubs and the DEIB board,” sophomore and leadership member of DEIB, Patricia Davilla Gill said. “We wanted the clubs to have more contact with each other since many overlap… we wanted to create more links and inspire the groups to do the same.”
Davilla Gil shared that she felt that this year’s Culture Fair was a drastic improvement compared to last year’s which had little participation. This year was drastically different. Instead of after school, this school hour event had a big crowd of people flowing in for all of lunch. Davilla Gill stated, “We’re really, really happy with the turnout. Honestly we did not anticipate that many students coming in.”
To keep the students involved and participating, leadership kept them engaged by buying fake passports and stamps. If any student managed to collect 10 stamps from each respective club, they received the prize of a little globe. Sophomore Nishta Mukundan said “I got all the stamps. It was pretty fun. As a prize I got a little globe keychain.”
Despite engagement from students, diversity clubs who participated in the fair stated they felt frustration that people were more focused on trying to speed through the gym to get stamps instead of being more attentive to the clubs itself.
Students shared that they appreciated that leadership made sure everything turned out good for every club. Sophomore Sophie Tang said, “Overall I appreciate how leadership took the time to ensure that each diversity club had a space to promote their culture during the Cultural Fair.”
The process to set up this event started on Wednesday morning during 4th period. Leadership students set up all the tables in the morning and proceeded their preparations during academy and at the beginning of lunch.
For many of the students advertising their clubs at this event it went well. Club presidents were able to give their clubs publicity while spreading awareness about their cultures. Freshman and President of Taiwanese Club, Angele Tseng stated, “The Cultural Fair went well, we were able to distribute all our snacks and a few people hinted at joining us at the next meeting. I think we let more people know about our club.”
As great as the turnout was, DEIB stated that they had a few improvements that they’d like to add onto next year’s fair. “Next year hopefully we’ll get more clubs to do it both religiously and culturally,” Davila Gil summarized. “[We want] more students individually [to hold stands], and next year we want to do more advertising.”
