Written By: Tian Ho
On cold November night, votes were being counted, but probably not the reason you are thinking of. There was no election to be had. Instead, a union of 16 student organizations gathered to share kindness through cuisine.
While these votes were in-fact being tallied for candidates, they were for the candidates of the “best tasting dish” competition. On the evening of Friday, November 22, 2024, organizations affiliated with the Multicultural Student Council (MSC) and the Campus Ministries Council in collaboration with the Evett L. Simmons Center for Multicultural Appreciation and the FSC Chapel joined together for an event they called “Friendsgiving: A Faith and Culture Potluck” inside the Fannin Center as part of Florida Southern College’s Kindness Week.
Sixteen student organizations, eight in partnership with each council apiece brought a total of 32 dishes to serve and welcome various members of the Florida Southern College Community. By the end of the evening, 107 individual students and various additional staff members ranging from professors to members of the student life team stopped by the Fannin Center to sample and explore the vast and diverse group of students and student organizations represented through food. This is MSC’s most attended event this semester.
Attendees were greeted at the door and handed their ticket for the evening which would allow them to try four different dishes from any of the tables which displayed an abundance of food. As dishes were sampled, guests were able to have their say in who they believed made the best dish presented that night as part of the potluck.
Halfway through the event, Associate Chaplain and one of the key organizers of the event, Wyatt Robinson, stopped food service and brought everyone into the main hall of the Fannin Center. In a packed room with every seat filled and additional guests lining the walls, Robinson took a moment to address all the attendees and give thanks for their choice to spend the evening together with Thanksgiving break beginning the following week.
Robinson would continue by giving gratitude to the Campus Ministry organizations who he worked with to help make this event happen. These included the Beyond Campus Ministries, Catholic Campus Ministries, Hillel, Men’s Bible Studies, the Nursing Christian Fellowship, Sandwich Services, and Women’s Bible Studies .
With the event occurring as part of FSC’s Kindness Week initiative, Robinson gave background to how the event came to be by combining faith and culture and his inspiration to bring a large-scale potluck to FSC’s campus.
The event itself was sparked during an inter-faith dialogue session that Robinson advises regularly within the Fannin Center in which he and a member of the Muslim Student Association’s Executive Board discussed their similar experiences growing up in their respective faith. They also discussed the fond memories they had of sharing food at their place of worship with members of their community.
Due to the Muslim Student Association’s connection to the Multicultural Student Council, both communities on campus found out they were planning a potluck on the exact same day. Shortly after a meeting with MSC leadership, Friendsgiving: a Faith and Culture Potluck was born.
Joining him up front would be the President of the Multicultural Student Council and the Student Government Association’s Vice President of Inclusion, Tian Ho. MSC leadership envisioned the potluck to emulate a tradition that had disappeared a couple years ago which had been an MSC and DEIB organization staple, but with a few upgrades to ease the pressure on the organization’s executive boards.
Ho spoke on MSC’s love of food and cuisine which had been integral to their intent for the event to make a return, but not to be forgotten were MSC’s partner organizations: Allies, the Asian-Pacific Islander Student Association (APISA), the Black Student Union (BSU), the Caribbean Student Association (CSA), the Hispanic Latinx Student Coalition (HLSC), the Middle Eastern-European Student Association (MESA), the Muslim Student Association (MSA), and Scientista.
Not too long later, Ho would welcome Assistant Professor of Communication, Dr. Katherine Loh, to the front of the room with a mention of her famous SPAM fried rice that she cooks for APISA on the regular whenever they have team dinners with her. A fellow lover of food, APISA’s advisor, and the professor who administers the Intercultural Communication course in Florida Southern’s curriculum, Loh was the ideal fit to address the crowd that evening.
However, unlike how much of November had been talk of divisiveness throughout the United States and abroad, Loh wanted to talk about the concept of coming together and the idea of how kindness can be displayed through sharing a meal.
This concept had been integral to Loh’s life ever since sharing meals as a family while she was growing up in Singapore which she explained in great detail as attendees listened intently. Loh would then go on to encourage others to share their own family traditions with the group that they had growing up or even if they continue to this day. Around the room, students and staff alike shared their traditions with the group as attendees embraced new traditions and represented their own.
As Dr. Loh officially reopened food service and sent students racing back into lines for food, discussions commenced around the entire building about cuisine, faith, culture, identity, and more. A mad dash back to kitchen commenced and food once again began to flow.
For the next hour, plates continued flying from all corners of the kitchen and steadily the serving tray as well as crock pots were depleted. Organizations who made extra servings started passing around to-go boxes and those went almost as quickly as the plates did. Around 8:30p.m. is when the last guest was ushered out of the Fannin Center by Robinson to put a cap on the 2024 edition of Friendsgiving.
After the event and the Thanksgiving holiday, Robinson sat down for an interview on his perspective on the concept of the event, how it came to be on his end, what was his experience as an attendee and an organizer, if there were any worries he had, what his hopes are for 2025, and what events like this accomplish.
Robinson echoed a lot of positive sentiments about Friendsgiving in terms of the experience as well as the concepts that he along with the student organizations wanted to portray. Robinson had been an integral part of designing FSC’s Kindness Week programming the past two years, but was also open about their continued efforts as a student life team to incorporate the cultural aspect within the three dimensions they built Kindness Week upon. Those dimensions are serving others, serving students, and sharing kindness in different ways in different cultures.
“People got to share kindness and not just talk about it. Not just hear about it.
Wyatt Robinson
They got to experience it in one of the most diverse settings that we’ve really had of an event that has happened here on our campus with all the different groups.”
Not to be forgotten is the timing of the event, given that it occurred this November after an election that kept the nation as a captive audience. Despite the polarizing attributes experienced by many throughout the month, there was no sign of that at the event which Robinson had immense praise for students.
The idea of sharing a meal can often go under the radar as the world becomes more digitally connected, but this event embodied the concept of the human connection. The concept of connectivity between humans comes with knowledge and alongside that comes the need for acceptance of new opinions and experiences. When MSC and Campus Ministries set out to host this event, they wanted to show that unity through experiences and bring others together rather than dividing them.
Robinson spoke so much about how much of a challenge it can be to create an engaging learning environment so you can teach without lecturing. There was no shortage of learning that evening. There was no shortage of acceptance that evening. And on top of that there was no shortage of community amidst the vast and diverse group of students, staff, and faculty that was present that night.
Friendsgiving; A Faith and Culture Potluck may have concluded, but the mission behind it is a continuous one.