It is becoming more apparent that there exists this disconnect between the various cultures within our school. It seems that nobody can really agree on the idea of cultural sensitivity. Considering we recently just had another assembly recognizing cultural diversity with Black History Month, it is at least a little appropriate to up bring this topic. However, this is in reference to the Multicultural Week Assembly that happened a month ago and how it demonstrated a lack of cultural sensitivity.

What was STUCO trying to do

In previous years, the Multicultural Week Assembly has been allegedly one of the least favorite of the students.

“The Multicultural Assembly issue is no one ever likes it,” Justin Hixon said, STUCO sponsor.

While this may be true, there are still plenty of people who enjoyed the assembly for what it was. However, the fact that STUCO was trying to do something to improve student approval and engagement is commendable.

This is not the first time they have tried to get better student feedback. The suggestion box that pops up every once in a while was an idea of theirs that actually helped start Fudgey Fridays. So, for the Multicultural Week Assembly, it’s no surprise they wanted to change it up a bit.

“We knew we wanted to do something different,” said Mark McCaslin, STUCO treasurer and one of the planners for the Multicultural Week Assembly. “Last year, a lot of people said that they wanted to be a part of the assembly, so we knew we wanted to do something interactive.”

This meant they needed to put together several different events and get them passed through STUCO and then by the administration.

What went well

There were plenty of things wrong with the assembly, and STUCO was successful in the goal they originally set out to do: increasing student interaction.

“As far as execution, I think it went really well,” William Cornelius, STUCO member, said, and this is relatively true. The assembly ran smoothly, students were involved, and there was mainly positive feedback from the audience during the event. It was only really afterward that there were any notable issues.

“Usually, most reviews aren’t good,” Cornelius continued. “If you enjoyed it, and you had a good time, you’re not going to say that. More people are quick to point out the negative in things.”

Other than the games, the assembly included things from previous years of the Multicultural Week Assembly. Irish Dancers have always been a great addition to the assembly, but it was scary during this one watching them several times come close to tripping over the tarp that they had lain out over the gym floor. It was also fascinating to watch Alex Santillan’s grandfather sing in Spanish, even though no one could understand him due to a poor sound system.

“The change of venue from the gym to the auditorium was a good idea to make it more active,” Principal Justin Hunt said. “However, there have been mixed feelings regarding some of the activities.”

STUCO did, in fact, make the assembly much more interactive than it has been in the past, which seemed to succeed in keeping up the number of people who actually attended the assembly. However, the events that created the greatest cheer from the crowd were also ironically some of the more culturally insensitive ones.

Where thing went wrong 

While it was not apparently obvious to many of the people in the audience, much of what the assembly entailed managed to contradict the very essence of multicultural week. The idea should be that the students learn more about a variety of cultures and gain a better insight into the world. Instead, all the assembly did was reinforce preexisting racial stereotypes to amuse the students who inevitably thought it was just as funny as the people who put it together.

The first event to consider is the “Mariachi” dance contest. While mariachi does have traditions rooted in dancing, dressing up the Hispanic students in ponchos and sombreros with mustaches drawn on their faces is more than slightly divergent from the original dances.

“I think there could have been more for explaining the culture behind things,” agreed Cornelius. “I think there could have been some kind of background. I think we can still find a better middle ground between expressing the different cultures and showing the cultures as well as being engaging.”

Second to that was the spaghetti eating contest, which sounds like a good idea on paper, but crosses the line when it’s included as a way of demonstrating cultural diversity. Not only this, but the spaghetti was literally just a bowl of cold noodles and tomato purée, and it was obvious more than just the competitors were having a hard time digesting it all.

The lack of context was definitely clear when they proceeded with a demonstration of charades without giving any cultural background, except that “it was maybe a French-originated art form,” as Cornelius said. Regardless of this relationship, what the participants were doing wasn’t even really charades as they were asked to act out various scenarios that ultimately had nothing to do at all with multiculturalism. These “charades” quickly escalated when the pairs of participants had to act out an awkward and inappropriate scene of an impromptu child birth as delivered by the male member of each team.

Even after all these new games that STUCO put together just for the sake of improving student involvement, there were still only around 16 students out of a total 480 from the school that actually participated. Then, there were the people in the audience cheering on the events just as if it were another Spirit Week Assembly. While STUCO may have facilitated this event and initiated this whole controversy, it is really the existence of these people that needs to be addressed.

The concept of Cultural Sensitivity

While it wasn’t intentional, the games that went on during the assembly were based on racial and cultural stereotypes that contradict multiculturalism, and it should have been much more obvious to the people putting this together. Several students and teachers were seriously offended and even outraged by the assembly, but even then there were people who didn’t give it a second thought. While nobody meant anything by it, what this shows is that there is a lack of cultural sensitivity in the school at large.

The concept of cultural sensitivity begins by simply recognizing that there are differences among cultures and placing values on the diversity, and the assembly did nothing to accomplish this. This really just boils down to lack of context. It was supposed to be a multicultural assembly, but they only showed a handful of different cultures, notably Mexican and Italian along with the Irish dancers, and completely failed to teach people anything new about these cultures. It simply reinforced preexisting stereotypes.

Suggestions for improvement

Other than just simply giving an explanation for the various cultural games and actually teaching the audience something about cultural diversity, there are better ways to engage students while also teaching them about different cultures.

Usually showing off music from different cultures creates positive feedback, so why not bagpipes? That would be something new, and there is apparently a bagpipe band in Oklahoma called the Highlanders.

The Irish dancers are always a nice addition to the show, and while STUCO did attempt to include another cultural dance style, there are still many more out there. Another one they could include is Bollywood Dancing, and there also happens to be an Arya Dance Academy in Oklahoma which is “dedicated to teaching South Asian dance techniques, music, singing, and acting to students of all ages,” according to the Arya Dance Academy website. This could have given the assembly a greater variety with a broad range of eastern cultures that wasn’t present in this one.

The assembly could have also included Native American culture, as no one in Oklahoma could argue that Native American culture isn’t important to our own history. There are yet more dances that come from part of the Red Earth organization.

While STUCO did serve sushi as part of multicultural week, they did not include any of these Asian cultures in the assembly. There could have been more done with this, and the fact the school is next to an Asian district should have given more reason to do so.

Even the assembly included Mexican culture already, there could have been more still in how it is an integral part of Oklahoma. Still more resources exist for these purposes.

These are just what was found over a few minutes of scavenging the Internet, and there are surely more to be found. The point is, these are the things that should be included in a multicultural assembly.

If you would like to weigh in on the topic of cultural sensitivity, email The Marionette at [email protected] to share your opinion or story.