An event for the whole community, Multicultural Night will take place on April 10. West Linn High School (WLHS) Affinity Clubs have partnered with Wilsonville High School (WVHS) Affinity Clubs to bring a varied array of cultural activities to students and families in the West Linn-Wilsonville (WLWV) School District.

This direct cross-school collaboration on an event is something that has rarely occurred in the school’s recent history, but this joint effort to create Multicultural Night is an absolute positive, sure to promote unity of our school district and allow for greater celebration of the many cultures represented in our district. 

While a smaller Multicultural Night and Unity Day—a similar event—have taken place in the past, this is the first time a cultural celebration has been a cross-district cooperation. Maryam Al Medyadi, junior, is the Equity and Diversity Commissioner for the Associated Student Body (ASB) and co-president of the Muslim Student Union (MSU). Al Medyadi has been the main coordinator of this year’s Multicultural Night, working with Affinity Clubs since September and reaching out to community groups to plan the activities that will be featured at the event.

“This year we were really ambitious with what we wanted to do with Multicultural Night,” Al Medyadi said. “Last year was a bit smaller, and it was [only] a few booths. This year, we started planning it far in advance. There’s three main sections: activity booths led by the Affinity Clubs. And then we’re gonna have a cultural fashion show, and then at the end we’re gonna have cultural performances.”

The cultural performances to end the night will include ones from community organizations such as the Oregon Black Pioneers, the Oregon Chinese Coalition, as well as the Youth Music Project Mariachi band. Certain Affinity Clubs will also deliver performances, as will the Jade Dance team. Avantika Shevde, senior, is the co-president of the South Asian Cultural Association (SACA) and has been a part of the group of leaders planning Multicultural Night alongside Al Medyadi. 

“I’m honestly just looking forward to having something a little bigger,” Shevde said. “Last year’s Multicultural Night was really cute, it was really sweet, but it was pretty small. I’m excited to see a lot more clubs represented at this Multicultural Night, and I’m excited to see many more performances.”

The collaboration between these many Affinity Clubs took months of planning and meetings to determine the structure of the event, and further logistics to incorporate WVHS’s Affinity Clubs.

“We’d have monthly meetings with all the Affinity Club leaders, and we would talk about our booths and what we wanted to do, if we wanted to sell things, etcetera,” Al Medyadi said. “And then we went on a field trip to Wilsonville High School, and we spoke with their Affinity Groups on what they wanted to do.”

This opportunity to connect with Wilsonville High School students and their families through Multicultural Night is a great benefit to our community. While West Linn hosts plenty of events which are open to the community, including sports games and May Day, the events hosted by Affinity Clubs are often limited to just our school. Students can learn a lot and have great experiences at school events, but those that are open to community interaction and connection can allow students to gain a greater perspective about the experiences of others in our community.

Multicultural Night, however, provides a greater sample of the community for students to appreciate and learn from. Additionally, the presence of multiple diverse cultures at one event encourages students to come for one aspect of the event and stay for all of the others. 

“[Multicultural Night] is just a good way to have people appreciate our culture without making them do [research],” Shevde said. “Obviously, I would love for people to do their research, but let’s be so real, we’re a bunch of high schoolers; they’re not gonna do that. So, having a place where people can really [learn] to appreciate culture rather than appropriate it, I think that’s a good place.”

According to U.S. News, 69% of students in the WLWV School District are white, 15.2% are Hispanic/Latino, and only 9.7% of students identify as two or more races. Only 31% of WLWV students are of minority races, which is a stark contrast to the national average in 2022, where 54.5% of public school students were of a minority race.

“It’s a good place to get traction for Affinity Groups, because I don’t think a lot of people understand that we have these groups for a reason,” Shevde said. “Because it’s West Linn. The majority of the population is white. But I know for a fact, at least in my freshman year, I wanted a place where I could meet other South Asian people, and, even just other cultures in general, [learn] to appreciate my own culture, coming from such a whitewashed community.”

Our Affinity Clubs are a place where students can find other students who share their culture and history, and as a school, it’s vital that we celebrate these clubs and the cultures and students they represent. 

“I saw that a lot of students, and especially freshmen, would feel so much more supported if their culture and their background and their roots got recognized and celebrated,” Al Medyadi said. “And that’s why [Multicultural Night] is really important to me.”

It’s as important for students to feel accepted in their community as it is for students to gain perspective. High school is a period of transition, learning, and growth, and events like Multicultural Night give us the opportunity to continue to grow our understanding of cultures we’re not often exposed to in a school district where the vast majority of students are white. 

Every year, our school community changes as students enter and leave, so hopefully Multicultural Night will continue on to celebrate the cultures of our community and continue to build new perspectives. 

“[We’re] keeping in mind that this is the first year we’re doing anything like this, and so this is definitely an experimental year,” Al Medyadi said. “We’re interested in potentially having it every year traded off at each high school, so one year at West Linn, next year Wilsonville, and then vice versa.”

Multicultural Night will take place on April 10 from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m. at West Linn High School, with the cultural fashion show beginning at 6:00 p.m. and the performances beginning at 7:00.