On Friday, the International Day of Peace was celebrated in the Quad alongside the Native American Festival to spread unity and diversity.
“ETSU has a lot of diversity on campus,” Tedra Bennett, assistant to the director of programming and outreach at the Multicultural Center said. “And you know each year the theme differs for international day of peace, but the whole point of it is to create a sense of unity between all of the different ethnicities, cultures and races.”
Bennett said that the International Day of Peace has been happening at ETSU for the past five years, and that this year’s theme centered around the topic of climate change.
Vicky Trejo, president of the International Student Association, said that the International Day of Peace helps students learn about different cultures.
“You’re learning skills for your future life,” Trejo said. “Outside of school there’s going to be a lot of different people as well. You need to be able to learn that now, and it’s going to attract people later on.”
During the day, there was tabling from different organizations across campus that had displays centered around peace. One of the organizations was the ETSU Gospel Choir, and their activity involved students choosing a word associated with peace written on a box and writing what that word meant to them.
“When I think of peace I think of us coming together,” Bradlee Ferguson, an ETSU student involved with the Gospel Choir said. “Gospel choir, we do a lot of things about being unified. International Day of Peace is about unity, being together, what peace means to all of us.”
Along with a tabling of different organizations during the day, International Day of Peace also hosted a balloon release and candlelight vigil at Borchuck Plaza later in the evening, with different students from various organizations speaking about what peace meant to them.
“For me peace means tranquility,” speaker Darshan Shah, a member of the Indian Student Organization, said. “It means being free from persecution due to one’s nationality, race, ethnicity or sexuality. It also comes from the comfort in knowing you have a roof over your head, food to eat and loving family members and friends. … I want to end my portion with a quote from one of the most famous peace activists, Mahatma Gandhi. He says, ‘Be the change you want to see in the world.'”
