The MSMS Asian Student Association held the International Culture Festival — the first such event since 2020 — on Nov. 15, featuring booths and performances from internationally focused student organizations.
Held at the Catherine Bryan Gazebo, the festival featured booths representing African American, Chinese, French, German, Indian, Korean, Mexican, Russian and Taiwanese cultures. The Black Student Alliance, Indian Cultural Association, Strings Club and senior pianist Colin Chung gave performances.
ICF was an annual tradition before COVID-19 but had not been held since the pandemic. Senior Raymond Yang led the effort to bring it back with the help of other ASA officers, who made up the International Culture Festival Committee.
Yang, president of ASA and coordinator of the ICF Committee, said he wanted to bring the festival back after hearing about the event from his senior ASA officers.
“We started planning this event as early as June and began gathering volunteers for the festival in August,” he said. “We ended up having more than 60 student-volunteers by the day of the festival.”
Students dedicated countless hours to preparing for the festival. Volunteers at the Chinese booth spent a week preparing dumplings, wrapping them in the Goen Hall kitchen until midnight the night before the festival and resuming at 5 a.m. on the day of the event to finish.
“[The festival] turned out really well, and we were so glad we were able to sell all of our dumplings,” said junior Elissa Wang, who helped run the Chinese booth.
MSMS world language teacher and ASA sponsor Lori LeVar Pierce said the students’ work and dedication made the festival successful.
“I was just really impressed with how many students worked really hard to make food, create activities or decorate their booths,” Pierce said. “I thought it came together really, really nicely that way.”
Junior Margot Hoffman, who helped run the German booth, said the dedication given by the students was nice to see.
“I think it was really cool how much some of the people prepared and how much they took to perform,” she said.
ASA Historian and ICF Performance Director Claire Rhee said she felt everyone was prepared and proud to represent their culture.
“I was very touched on how close we all felt on that one day,” she said.
Pierce said the festival brought the MSMS community closer together through appreciation of different cultures.
“It [brings] us together as a community to appreciate either where people are from heritage-wise or what languages they are learning,” Pierce said.
Even though the festival returned for the first time in years, Yang said he was surprised by the success of the event and is determined to continue it.
“This was a really amazing experience I never thought we could’ve ended this successfully when we began this [planning] event,” he said. “I want the festival to become an important tradition ingrained in the culture of MSMS.”
Editor’s Note: Claire Rhee and Raymond Yang are members of The Vision’s editorial board and contributed to this story. Margot Hoffman is a Vision staff writer.
