[ad_1]
Editor’s Note: Tomilade Akinyelu is a current Daily staffer. Akinyelu did not contribute to the reporting of this article.
A community of more than 100 University of Michigan students, faculty members and families gathered throughout the newly renovated Ambatana Afro American Multicultural Lounge Tuesday evening to celebrate its grand reopening after two years of renovation. The event started with a performance by the Amala Dancers, an African dance team, followed by a remembrance of Jon Onye Lockard, the late artist and Afroamerican and African Studies professor.
The grand reopening highlighted art in many other forms, including poetry and music. A handful of members from the African Students Association spoke on their relationship to the lounge by reciting poems and singing songs together. Outside the lounge on the lawns of South Quad Residence Hall and West Quad Residence Hall, balloon inflatables, stuffed animals and treats were displayed at a student resource fair.
LSA and Music, Theatre & Dance junior Tomilade Akinyelu, African Students Association member, began the ceremony by defining ambatana, a Swahili word meaning to stick together. Akinyelu discussed the meaning behind the lounge for U-M students and community members.
“Even this lounge serves as a monument to our unbreakable, inimitable, sophisticated spirit,” Akinyelu said. “And yet, even through our struggle to greatness, no one was ever alone. Through every step, we had each other. We stuck together.”
Art & Design senior Elsa Olander had several of her visual art creations displayed in the lounge. In an interview with The Michigan Daily, she explained the concept of unity in an art piece she had created with different fabrics sewn together in the shape of Africa.
“The whole thing is to just tie together, to show that each fabric is different, but they blend between each other … borders are just borders, they don’t separate us as Africans,” Olander said. “We’re very different but (the) same.”
LSA senior Sunidhi Majalikar and Engineering senior Aminata Ndiaye, both of whom are third-year Diversity Peer Educators through Michigan Housing, held an information booth at the resource fair outside the lounge. The pair informed students about the history of multicultural lounges at the University. Majalikar gave background on the events that took place prior to creating the lounges.
“In the ’60s and ’70s, there was the Black Action Movement that happened on campus led by a lot of the Black organizations … pushing for diversity, inclusion (and) support for Black students and students of Color in general,” Majalikar said. “Out of that came the multicultural lounges.”
Ndiaye also discussed the Black Student Union’s role in the Black Action Movements, explaining the More Than Four campaign, which aims to support and advocate for Black students at the University, and its effect on multicultural lounges.
“The Black Student Union led the More Than Four campaign which was trying to bring awareness at the University … for more than 4% of the population to be Black students to increase the diversity,” Ndiaye said. “I think that’s really cool that we have these spaces to pay homage to those movements and a lot of them talk about movements that have happened on campus, or leaders that are associated.”
Daily News Contributor Kaelyn Sourya can be reached at ksourya@umich.edu.
Related articles
[ad_2]
Source link
