Bucks is hosting its first ever LatinX Heritage Month celebration and all aspects of the college ares chipping in to make it special.
Sept. 15 – Oct. 15 will be celebrated with numerous events, and CulinArts will be pitching in by creating and selling Hispanic foods for students. Some events include speakers, exhibitions, and more.
The Hicks Art Center will host a Peruvian artist’s exhibition. The artist, Kukuli Velarde, many works will be shown in this exhibition until Oct. 19. There will be a reception on Sept. 18 with the artist’s gallery talk being included.
Fran Orlando, director of exhibitions, said that this exhibition is something that everybody should take time to visit.
Another event hosts poet, Raquel Salas Rivera, on Oct. 3, at 1:30p.m. Rivera is the 2018-19 Poet Laureate of Philadelphia, and the author of “while they sleep (under the bed is another country).”
To close out the month’s events, on Oct. 15, there will be a conference presentation with Professor Jeanette Marie Kelley from Villanova. Kelley will discuss a crisis in Venezuela which will include personal experiences and thoughts. This professor is also a student at Bucks.
This is Bucks’ first LatinX Heritage month, however there were always discussions about making it happen.
Professor Arlene Toro said, “There were always talks of diversity in Bucks, however it was just a discussion.”
These discussions eventually found their ways into numerous classrooms, and those professors spoke to one another and decided that there needed to be a campus wide initiative.
This concentrated effort eventually morphed itself into a LatinX Heritage celebration month.
Some of these professors and people include Toro, Samantha Gross, Ethel Rackin, Orlando, and more. They believed in promoting diversity through the month.
Gross said that this is, “important, really important,” to promote this diverisity, and to celebrate something that hasn’t been widely celebrated are important.
Toro mentioned that this is the, “first year that there has been a concentrated effort.”
It’s the hopes of these organizers to create a month that will honor those students and professors who are Hispanic, and to give a voice to the LatinX heritage.
Organizers spoke with such passion, and they cared about every single detail going behind this month. It’s these people who are making a difference in what they do.