The World Student Organization’s annual International Dinner brought more than 60 cultures together on Sunday night in the Union Ballroom.
The dinner featured six ethnic performances and a fashion show with clothing from around the world for the students and community members in attendance.
Kobe Huynh, president of the World Student Organization, and his Vietnamese lion dance group gave the first performance of the evening.
“I feel really good about showing my culture to the community because I’ve been here for three years and we’ve never had lion dancing before so I wanted to bring a new thing to the community for the community to celebrate,” Huynh said.
Junior Kasie Durkit said the performance gave a great look at Vietnamese culture.
“I really like the color and the energy of the lion and I thought that the drumming in the background really added something to the whole performance,” she said.
Among the other performances was a Sri Lankan dance, an African drum performance and an Irish dancer.
Huynh said the theme of the dinner was global friendship because everyone’s differences need to be celebrated.
“We believe that nothing can bring peace to this world except friendship,” he said. “We have to understand each other and celebrate each other’s differences and the biggest way for that to happen is to have the common factor of friendship.”
President Mary Ellen Mazey said the dinner is one of the University’s most popular ways to celebrate diversity.
“I think it’s one of the many ways we can celebrate diversity and inclusion on this campus and international life and international experiences are important to all of us,” she said.
The dinner marked the beginning of International Education Week which will include more cultural events throughout the week, Huynh said.
“We have been working with many of our BGSU international student organizations to showcase a week of cultural events and activities to recognize international communities within the Bowling Green community.”
A second flag ceremony ended the evening and President Mazey said she has been so impressed by the flags over the years that she is working on having them displayed in the Union.
“[The flags] just show the international perspective, the global life in which we all live and I’ve been so impressed with that, that I’ve been after some individuals for about a year to see how we get these flags displayed right here in the Student Union,” Mazey said.
