Song, dance and job interviews at ISO Cultural Evening

by Lawrence Sumulong

For students who know International Student Organization (ISO) mainly through their popular food bazaar, it is high time to add another item to the calendar: the Cultural Evening, ISO’s other major annual event.

Cultural Evening, which will take place on Sunday at 7 p.m. at Harris, showcases the cultural cornucopia at Grinnell through various student performances. It also serves as a get-together for international and domestic students, especially graduating seniors and students returning from abroad, and enhances dialogue between social and cultural groups.

“It’s extremely important because on the most basic level it encourages American students to learn more about different culture and different ways of life outside of the United States,” said ISO treasurer Hamza Hasan ’09. “But it’s not just specific to the students of the college—we usually get a good number of people from the town as well.”

The longstanding Cultural Evening is an open forum for students and groups. According to Hasan, ISO sends out an invitation to the various cultural organizations asking for anyone who might be interested in representing their country, organization, and culture through various artistic mediums. Emphasizing diversity, ISO shapes the final list of participants by making a concerted effort to represent as many different countries as possible.

The evening profits from performances by a medley of different student organizations, like the African Students’ Union, the Korean P’ungmul Percussion Ensemble and the Latin American Ensemble. And in the vein of offering new avenues of cultural insight, this year’s program will include a new segment: a short skit showing four students from differing social backgrounds in the setting of a job interview. The addition of the skit represents ISO’s continuing effort to disarm stereotypes, entertain and educate the public about the world outside of what they consider familiar.

Hasan said Cultural Evening’s strength lies in its capacity to unite students and groups, and said, “It’s a collaborative event that serves to bring together people of all nations and countries.”