On Wednesday, September 14, Stockton’s Multicultural Center hosted the Multicultural Celebration Kickoff in the Campus Center Event Room. The event was meant to “celebrate the importance of diversity, inclusion, and multiculturalism here at Stockton.”

Multicultural Center Director Jovin Fernandez announced that this year’s theme at Stockton will be multiculturalism and that the celebrations will not end after October. The establishment of the Cultural Heritage Awareness Month Planning (CHAMP) Committee was also announced, and Fernandez invited those in attendance to join. She expressed her excitement, as this year’s multicultural programming will expand to include more than five categories. According to Fernandez, the Stockton community will see an increase in events celebrating the Arab, Jewish, and Native American communities.

Jeff Wakemen, the director of student development, spoke on his experience arriving at Stockton ten years ago, and how there was a severe lack of coordinated effort for the monthly celebrations. He worked with the Student Senate to create a base budget to fund these themed months. One of the first additions to the celebration schedule was a month for Asian American Pacific Islander students. Wakeman described how he worked hard to make sure everyone was heard and not just lumped together. “Who am I to tell you how to celebrate your cultural heritage,” he said.
Shane Moore, the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Chairperson for the Student Senate, encouraged students to join diversity events and to “find their safe space and engage in the culture here at Stockton.”

Dr. Toyo Aboderin, Africana Studies Dual Credit Coordinator, gave the keynote remarks at the event, speaking about her conflicting feelings towards what DEI has become. She called out the use of buzzwords like “inclusion” and how we often see “proclaiming diversity as a one-size-fits-all fix” in society. She said that Stockton is good at celebrating diversity, but there is still a way to go. “Celebration is a crucial way of combating discrimination and ignorance,” she explained, “celebration can be a daily decision to honor your identity and that of others.”

The crowd also got to hear from Dianne Stalling, the Assistant Director of Student Development. She detailed how she wanted to focus more on diversity. “Diversity expands a student’s worldliness.” Stalling explained how often people find themselves segregated based on where they live, and do not get a lot of interaction with other groups. “Interacting with people from a variety of groups widens our social circle by expanding the collection of people you can associate and develop relationships with,” she said, “diversity promotes creative thinking and increases our capacity for viewing issues from an alternative perspective…We learn more from people who are different from us than we learn from people who are the same as us.”

The event concluded with a Kahoot game, tabling from a diverse arrangement of student
organizations, and closing remarks by Fernandez.