This year’s winter extravaganza allowed orchestra, band, and choir to showcase their talent while collaborating, but on Friday, they’ll get the opportunity to share parts of their culture and socialize through a newly created multicultural potluck. 

“It’s joyous to see our collective planning turn into a place where memories can be made with friends,” orchestra vice president junior Nolan Sow said. “With respect to orchestra socials, I usually attend all of the activities that we have to offer to our members, [however], this will be the first time I attend an event with band and choir, which I see as a huge opportunity to build genuine connections!” 

The Multicultural Night, a new social for all fine arts programs, replaces one of the orchestra’s January socials in an attempt to encourage student socialization. 

“We always do a social in January, and traditionally, it has been a movie social in the past,” orchestra assistant director Madison Waggerman said. “But our president team this year has been looking to do something different that’s more social, and people can have more interactions than just having to sit in silence. They’ve reached out to the other choir and band leadership teams too to help.”

Having a mixed crowd of people from different organizations means a lot more work goes into planning the event.

“Normally, we have 100 or less students attending our socials, so combining all three groups means there’s a lot more planning that goes into the social,” orchestra logistics officer sophomore Krish Kumar said. “However, this also means that people can interact with people from other organizations, and we can have a larger turnout.” 

This new social is a chance to bring all fine arts together, including color guard. For choir freshman Vaishnavi Reddy, the people she’ll get to be with are only part of the reason for her enthusiasm. 

“I’m mostly looking forward to hanging out with my friends and also trying new food I haven’t tried before,” Reddy said. 

Though similar events took place before the pandemic, Friday’s event is the first time in years students have the opportunity to participate in an event of this scale with the entire fine arts program. 

“It’s the first social I’ve been to with all three of [the groups],” color guard senior Elle Monohan said. “It’s so different due to the masses of numbers and intermingling as a fine arts community compared to coincidence of classes. This being all together strengthens the similarities between us all as music and fine arts students.” 

Sow, who organized this event, finds it important that students stay true to the point of this event: sharing culture. 

“I am bringing potstickers – or maybe some people refer to them as dumplings,” Sow said. “I am ethnically Chinese, and one of our cultural dishes is potstickers. As this is a multicultural potluck, we encourage people to bring an item that has a cultural tie to their ethnicity.”