His­panic Her­itage Month Re­cap

Ella Meyer 

Staff Writer 

Mishawaka – As Sep­tem­ber wraps up, we’d like to re­mem­ber some spe­cial events that were held on cam­pus for His­panic Her­itage Month, which is con­tin­u­ing into Oc­to­ber 15^th. One ex­cit­ing event was Salsa Night, where stu­dents got to learn and prac­tice danc­ing in the salsa style and pur­chase boxes of candy from dif­fer­ent Latin-Amer­i­can coun­tries as a fundraiser for Unidos, Bethel’s Latino stu­dent fel­low­ship. An­other event called Heart-to-Heart in­vited stu­dents to come and share or lis­ten about His­panic Her­itage Month and what it is like to be part of a mi­nor­ity group. Fi­nally, on Sep­tem­ber 25^th, a chapel cel­e­bra­tion took place with Mex­i­can folk­loric dance, Span­ish wor­ship songs, and speaker Ker­win Ro­driquez. Mov­ing into Oc­to­ber, there will be an­other chapel cel­e­bra­tion on the 13^th with Pas­tor Joann Rosario, a Psalmist and record­ing artist. That af­ter­noon, there will be an in­de­pen­dence cel­e­bra­tion on the Slab at 3 p.m. with a live band and piñata. A bilin­gual wor­ship night for stu­dents and mem­bers of the com­mu­nity will be hap­pen­ing later that evening. 

Af­ter His­panic Her­itage Month is over, there will be more events put on by Unidos that stu­dents should look for­ward to. There are ten­ta­tive plans to have a night of Lotería, which is a tra­di­tional Mex­i­can game sim­i­lar to bingo, and a game night for Los Tres Reyes Ma­gos af­ter Christ­mas. By April, there will be an end-of-the-year gath­er­ing called La De­s­pe­dida for who­ever would like to come. As de­tails for these events are still be­ing worked out, there should be more in­for­ma­tion avail­able soon.  

When I asked Tania Gon­za­lez, the pres­i­dent of Unidos, to tell me why she be­lieves these events are so im­por­tant to stu­dents, she said, “It gives them a sense of con­nec­tion to cam­pus and also to cul­ture, be­cause I know when I was a fresh­man, these things weren’t as known or talked about, and I feel like now they’re def­i­nitely an­nounced more so peo­ple can go to the events. It’s also a sense of be­long­ing to cam­pus for His­panic stu­dents, and then they can also meet more peo­ple who re­late to them.”