Nine of Syracuse University’s international student associations are participating in the inaugural International Fest.  

On Sunday, each organization will create a booth to share information about their culture, hand out food samples and showcase an artistic performance. The festival will be held at the Sheraton Syracuse University Hotel & Conference Center at 4 p.m. and is free for all SU students, faculty and staff.  

Juan Tavares, the director for the Slutzker Center for International Services and event coordinator for the festival, hopes to bring international students and domestic students together at the festival. He said he believes an event like this will foster leadership, entrepreneurship and allow students to display pride in their culture. 

“It’s going to help them work as a team,” Tavares said. That teamwork will be important for what Tavares called a friendly competition between the associations over which booth is the best. 

Each booth will be rated by judges based on informational content and creativity while their performance will be based on their execution and the audience’s engagement. 

Tavares, who joined the SU community in July, was inspired by a similar event at Western Michigan University, where he worked as director of the International Student Activities office for 12 years.  

Due to the limited space at the Sheraton, the event is only open to SU students, faculty and staff, which is why Tavares said he has been cautious in the event’s advertising. However, he hopes that in the following years, the festival will be held in Goldstein Auditorium and will be open to the rest of the Syracuse community, like at WMU’s event. 

“When my children were little, they loved coming to the International Festival and looked forward to it every year,” Tavares said. 

The festival will serve as a fundraiser for the international student associations, Tavares said. Food tickets can be purchased at the door for $1 that attendees can use as payment to sample foods from the booths.  

Sue Bracy, director of food services commissary and main offices, said at one of the event’s meetings that every association was assigned to a dining hall where they would teach their recipes to the cooks and together prepare all the food samples needed for the event. 

“It’s going to be a great opportunity for both our students and our cooks,” said Bracy, who said that the dining centers could potentially convert these recipes into their daily menus for all of SU.  

Bracy added that all the chefs are excited to work with the students to create dishes like frybread, a flat dough bread fried in oil from the Indigenous Students Association; chaat, an Indian snack from the Society for the Promotion of Indian Classical Music And Culture Amongst Youth at Syracuse University; dumplings from Global China Connection and milk tea from the Pakistani Student Association.  

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Kimmel’s head chef is looking forward to learning how to make pain au chocolat or chocolate croissants with La Société Francophone, Bracy said. 

“I think that it’s a given that everyone is going to take away some really great food,” said Amanda Paule, the president of La Société Francophone. “Both a literal and figurative taste of all of these cultures.” 

Each association had a budget of about $700 to decorate their booths, said Paule, who bought a tent to cover their table, cinema and literature, easels for displays about French paintings, among other things. Tavares added that other groups’ purchases included backdrops and clothing from their country or region to represent their culture on campus. 

Denise Magny, vice president of Haitian American Students Association, said that the Haitian national motto, “strength through unity,” is how they want to model their association, and the International Fest is a great way to achieve that.  

“We’re excited to present our culture, to showcase our beautiful culture,” Magny said. 

Published on October 27, 2019 at 11:17 pm