Multicultural Resource Center winter 2019

Signature events and initiatives

During this quarter, the Multicultural Resource Center hosted a number of large-scale events to serve the campus community, including:

• An Evening with Steven Canals/POSE Week: In celebration of LatinX Heritage Month, the 50th anniversary of the Latin American Student Union (LASU) and the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, the MRC, in collaboration with the Q Center and Campus Activities, brought alumnus Steven Canals ’05, MA ’08, creator of FX TV show POSE, to campus Oct. 24, as part of the Distinguished Speakers Series. The moderated discussion was led by alumnus Desborne Villaruel ’17, MS ’18, and a student leader from the LASU.
• POSE Week: In preparation for the Canals event, the MRC and the Q Center hosted a weeklong screening of episodes from season one of POSE, accompanied by discussions on issues affecting queer people of color with the audience. This concluded with an Emmy Watch Party where Canals and others involved in the creation of POSE were nominated for numerous awards.
• Culture and Food Series: Culture at Chenango: With the continued success and effective partnership with Binghamton University Dining Services (BUDS), the MRC continued the Culture and Food Series for the campus community during the fall semester. The Culture at Chenango: Latin American Edition was held Oct. 8, and was co-sponsored by the Latin American Student Union (LASU), Quimbamba Latin Dance Team and the National Association of Latino Fraternal Organizations Council (NALFO). A second Culture at Chenango: Diwali Edition, was held Nov. 19, and was co-sponsored by the Indian Graduate Student Organization (IGSO) and the Bengali Student Association. Both events were a success and accumulated to approximately $1,600 more in sales and 117 more customers than an average Tuesday at the Chenango Room. In addition, the second event saw the largest number of sales in one day at the Chenango Room.
• Culture Chats: Co-sponsored with the Student Association’s vice president of multicultural affairs, these were monthly lunches where students from our multicultural communities had the opportunity to meet faculty and staff across campus who provided insight and advice regarding their trajectories in higher education. The purpose of the chats was to start building meaningful relationships and support for multicultural students as they work toward their goals. The first lunch was held Sept. 9, in University Union 124. Additional lunches were held Oct. 24, and Nov. 14.
• Black Solidarity Day: Black Solidarity Day (BSD) was held from noon-1 p.m. Nov. 4, on the spine. It began with a demonstration with over 300 flags lined along the spine, leading to an informational station with MRC representatives. Going forward, we seek to expand initiatives for the day to include additional programming in the MRC Lounge as well as draw more attendance to the BSD program offered by the Black Student Union that evening.
• MRC Student Manager Programming Board and birthday celebration events: In an effort to continue building cultural awareness on campus and to continue fostering awareness of the MRC and its services, MRC continued its internal programming series planned by its Student Managers during this period. During these quarters the MRC Student Managers hosted five events: Monster Mash and Dia De Los Muertos for Halloween; Thanksgiving Myths for Native American Heritage Month; and DEI Staff Pajama De-stress, Zenvent and Hygge 101 for the #Stress-free Bing period.

Resource requests, Bartle tabling and room reservations

As a resource center, the MRC continues to expand on its offerings for the greater campus community:

• The MRC currently oversees and manages tabling requests for the Bartle Library breezeway; the process for this has successfully been moved to B There and is self-service with reviews done by MRC staff. During this quarter, MRC received and satisfied 32 table reservation requests.
• The MRC is in the process of revamping the Resource Room request form, which will be live at the beginning of the spring semester, making it easier for the campus community to utilize the MRC’s paid and unpaid resources for their events, course needs, etc. During this quarter, the MRC received and executed 25 resource room requests.
• As space in the University Union went offline this fall for renovations, the MRC promoted and encouraged student organizations to utilize its meeting space for organization meetings and events. The MRC saw an increase in utilization of the space for reservations as well as general study space. During this quarter, the MRC received an overwhelming 82 room reservations.

Religious community support

The MRC set a goal of continuing to enhance support for religious students during the 2019-2020 academic year. To begin to meet this goal, the MRC:

• Supported the creation of the Pagan Student Circle, a student peer-led support group for students who either identify as pagan or who wish to learn more about pagan practices and culture.
• Continued operations and promotions of the Multi-faith Meditation and Prayer Room (MMPR). The MMPR has become widely used and is currently one of the most prevalent reasons guests visit the MRC.
• Relaunched and expanded the Binghamton University Interfaith Council for students that was originally launched in 2017. The student chapter of the Binghamton University Interfaith Council (BUIC-S) met to revise its bylaws, organization and membership during the fall 2019 semester. The group is now recruiting additional organizations that have faith/religion within its organization mission. BUIC has also set a goal to conduct two interfaith events in the spring 2020 semester. Lastly, the student chair of BUIC attended a fall meeting of the BUIC for clergy to begin a collaborative relationship between the two entities.
• The MRC will collaborate with the Dean of Students Office on support for the Binghamton University Interfaith Council for Clergy. During the fall semester, MRC staff met with Dean of Students representatives to discuss the new Binghamton University Interfaith Council for Clergy (BUIC-C). It was determined that a Division of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion representative, via the MRC, will regularly attend BUIC-C meetings to aid in support of initiatives for BUIC-C and BUIC-S since the MRC currently provides resource, programmatic and financial support for BUIC-S.

Grants and collaborations

During this period, the MRC provided 17 grant and collaboration opportunities to cultural student organizations and campus departments for a total of $11,703. The MRC grant funding process has been revised. The new process will be executed for spring 2020 grants. Cultural organizations will now submit grant applications during the open application period that will take place during the semester prior to event execution. Since the application was revised during fall 2019, all grant applications for spring 2020 will be due in January 2020.