Student Life and Leadership, along with funding provided by the Arts & Cultural Events Committee (ACE), invites Salt Lake Community College students, staff, faculty and family members to attend the 5th Annual Diversity Dinner to connect with people of diverse backgrounds.
“This event is basically to bring the community together,” says Doctor Abio Ayeliya, Leadership and Diversity coordinator. “These are the two things I want people to get out of when they attend: one is to get to know people who are different from themselves, and second is what we can do as a community to make sure the college is a welcoming environment for students to come and learn at the same time.”
The 5th Annual Diversity Dinner will consist of learning how to communicate with one another, getting acquainted, discussing questions related to diversity and culture and examining what can be done to make things better on campus.
“I think they are really cool,” says Rebecca Starks, an SLCC student who attended last year’s 4th Annual Diversity Dinner. “I learned a lot about how to be more accepting and how to communicate better.”
Everyone will be required to sit with people they do not know, categorized by the letter of their first name. Then for the next three hours, in a well-mannered and meaningful dialogue, people of the SLCC community will have the chance to collaborate and help “create an environment where students can come [to SLCC], feel comfortable, feel safe and get the education they’re learning with no judgment,” says Ayeliya.
Information for the event can be found on the Student Life and Leadership webpage at www.slcc.edu/sll/. It is important to RSVP, so the coordinators can determine how much food will be needed. The 5th Annual Diversity Dinner will take place on March 5 at 5 p.m. in the Oak Room of the Student Center at the Taylorsville Redwood Campus.
“Our message here is that we [the SLCC community] are a family,” says Ayeliya. “We’re coming together to have a dinner and have a conversation about what we have in common, in difference and what we can do to stay a family and create a welcoming and safe environment for students to come here and get the education they need.”
