Fox Chapel Area High School students showed how much of a melting pot the district is with the third annual Multicultural Night.
The third annual installment of the inclusion celebration started by the DESI Club took place March 19.
About 200 people participated in the event, including about a dozen student organizations.
Created from DESI Club’s early 2000s event featuring Indian dance, food and music, Multicultural Night has grown into something where everyone can be celebrated.
“I think it’s just an amazing way to showcase our diversity,” said senior and event coordinator Arnim Kuchhal. “We have so many different clubs, so many different cultures represented. Some of them aren’t even clubs. They are just people from different cultures who are here and want to perform.
“It’s great for us to be able to give them an opportunity to showcase themselves and for everyone to be able to see what a diverse student body we have and the beautify of all different cultures across the globe.”
He said the club has been planning the event since January. More than 60 people volunteered for the event including about 50 from student clubs.
Many of the participants dressed in traditional outfits including scarves, dresses and kimonos.
Appetizers
The evening opened up with food samplings from around the world in the cafeteria.
The German Club had currywurst, a sausage dish with curry ketchup. Latinx Heritage Club had arroz con leche, also known as rice pudding.
The Asian Cultural Club offered fried wontons. The Jewish Student Union provided hamantaschen, a triangular-shaped cookie filled with sweets like jam, chocolates and fruit.
The International Cuisine Club prepared Italian, Irish and Mexican delights such as tiramisu, whoopie pies and horchata, respectively.
Club co-founder Rachel Pegher said the club bakes different cultural dishes monthly in an effort to help educate students’ taste buds and raise money for Make-A-Wish and The Trevor Project.
“We want to bring culture into the food that is served here,” said Rachel, a senior. “We really try to focus on doing not just all European countries. We do countries from Latin America, from Africa, Asia, all different continents. We sell the goods for a reasonable price, usually $1 to $3, to the student body. We usually make around $300 to $400 per sale and 25% of those profits go to our two charities.”
The Muslim Student Association had sweets including chocolates and dates. It also had manakeesh, a flat baked dough with various toppings often described as a Lebanese delight.
Sophomore Nisreen Al-Bataineh is a member of the association. She helped make chocolates.
“It’s honestly amazing because this is the first year that we’ve had MSA at our school, and it’s the first year that I went to Multicultural Night,” Nisreen said. “We actually have a big Muslim community in Fox Chapel. We have new immigrants here who don’t speak English. We really wanted to have everyone feel very included in the Fox Chapel environment. I’m one of the co-founders of this club, and I’m very glad that we did decide to make it.”
Many of the food dishes were gone within the first hour of the event. Rachel said she is not surprised how everything was gobbled up so fast.
“I think that whenever you are able to have a taste of someone else’s culture, that’s the first step toward understanding it,” she said.
Main course
The program transitioned into dance and musical performances in the high school auditorium.
There were musical performances from junior Zachary Rubin on the Guzheng, a Chinese plucked zither.
Seniors Luca Catone, Lindsay Gould and Wyatt Mueller also performed “Lonesome Road Blues” on their bass and guitars.
There were Bollywood and Chinese ribbon dances as well as a Wushu demonstration done by students.
Several high school teachers also joined in the fun. Dressed in cultural attire, they performed a dance choreographed by Arnim. Outfits were provided by the students’ parents.
Arnim said the teacher dance has been a tradition since the DESI Club was founded and has been one of the major highlights every year.
Senior Rohit Velankar was one of the driving forces behind the scenes assisting in seamless transitions between acts as well as ensuring production crews got what they needed.
“It’s a little bit stressful because there’s a lot of moving pieces and we don’t have the production scale of something like the musical, but it’s a lot of fun,” Rohit said. “We’ve been working on this for a few months. In the end, I have a lot of friends here today both performing and in the audience. Seeing them happy, seeing them watching, seeing them eating food, it’s all a good time. That’s kind of why I do it.”
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Rohit feels confident the next class will be able to continue the tradition of Multicultural Night when he and Arnim graduate.
“When we were freshmen we didn’t have a Multicultural Night, we had a DESI night,” Rohit said. “We had three seniors and four or five freshmen and one or two people in the middle. We have kind of a similar situation here (with) a couple of very committed seniors and a bunch of freshmen who are still learning the ropes. I think that we’re still going to have a great event for years to come.”
A video of the event will eventually be posted to the student-run Swift Fox Media YouTube channel.