Student Rise week celebrates diversity at Imperial

Racial awareness campaigns promotes integration and tolerance of others - News

Tuesday 20 November 2007
By Naomi Weston

‘Realise equality, celebrate diversity’ is this year’s theme for student Rise week, the Imperial College Union’s racial awareness campaign, held from the 5 to the 9 November.

The week focused on the cultural diversity of the College’s campuses with the aim of promoting integration and tolerance of others.

Throughout the week, Kirsty Patterson, Deputy President for Education and Welfare, and her team of volunteers gathered photos, interviews and comments from international students. They plan to use all the material to put together posters and materials for future events related to encouraging integration.

Students had the opportunity to try out a different international culinary dish at the Student Union cantine, daVinci’s. Dishes included Italian lasagne, Spanish paella, Ghanaian chicken jollof rice, Mexican fajitas and Chinese sweet and sour chicken.

The Union also showed two foreign language films in their cinema – award winning Spanish film ‘Volver’ and international collaboration ‘Motor Cycle Diaries’ which follows Che Guevara in his travels across South America.

Kirsty, who organised the week, said: "Rise has been about celebrating all the different cultures we have here at Imperial. It is a very diverse campus with students from all over the world." She added: "I plan to keep promoting these issues for the rest of the year culminating in a Rise festival planned for the end of the year."

We spoke to two international students about their experiences here.

Lai Wai, a second year medical undergraduate from Hong Kong, is enjoying her time in London. She said: "On my medicine course there are students from all over the world. I have friends here from Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, and Africa. Because the campus is quite small and compact I blend in with the home students here and I feel very integrated."

She added: "I don’t get too homesick as I go home twice a year and I have so many friends here it doesn’t bother me. The support network is also great here in the Faculty of Medicine for international students so if I have a problem there are always people to turn to."

Third year electrical engineering student, Oghenevese Aghoghovbia, from Nigeria, has also made a lot of friends at Imperial and is heavily involved in student life. She said: "I am a member of the Afro-Caribbean society which provides lots of events, careers advice and it is a great support, they are like a family to me. The society also assigns you a buddy to look after you in your first year which is a great help."

"Rise week is a fantastic idea, it promotes the diversity of the student population here and it provides me with an opportunity to learn more about the world around me. I have friends from Malaysia, Mexico, Ghana, Kenya and Singapore, I think I know someone from every continent," she added.

Rise week at Imperial coincides with Student Rise month, from 8-30 November, and is organised by the Mayor of London in partnerships with the Student Assembly Against Racism and the NUS Black Students Campaign.

The events, organised by students' unions and societies, are held to demonstrate the diversity of students in London and their opposition to racism.

For more information please visit Student Rise