Emma Bellantoni, Campus Carrier staff writer
Nathanael Mooney, Campus Carrier staff writer
Monday kicked off the start of the annual week-long event, Solidarity Week, a student-led project to introduce different perspectives and outlooks on topics surrounding the Berry community. This event highlights differences, educates and allows the community the opportunity to learn from each other.
Junior Mykelle Patterson, the partnership coordinator for Solidarity Week, talked about the struggles of making an impact.
“I think it’s super important because we can acknowledge differences, but it can kind of be hard to follow up with actionable steps,” Patterson said.
One of the goals of Solidarity Week is to get the student body to take steps to honor the dignity of everyone. The week is important to help start and continue conversations within the community. Whether the step is volunteering within Rome or attending a Cultural Event, actionable steps are what Solidarity Week is all about. 2024 is Patterson’s first year working directly on the Solidarity Week staff, but she has volunteered in previous years. This year she is excited to see the effect it has on the student body.
“I’m excited because I do feel like it happens every year in September, and around that time, people seem to be more open to conversations, and maybe going to a CE credit event for Solidarity Week might allow you to continue a conversation with someone in your class maybe the next week,” Patterson said.
Every Solidarity Week has a central theme that ties all the events together. This year’s theme, chosen by the student board, is dignity. Senior Addison Cook, student director of impact and co-chair of Solidarity Week, emphasizes that dignity is a foundational value of all humans, and realizing this can lead to new points of view.
“I think dignity is just really important in general, but we have defined it as, this fundamental value of all humans independent of their background, beliefs, cultures and actions,” Cook said. “It’s the idea that all humans have value and someone else can’t take that away from you, they can’t give that to you, that’s something you have as a person.”
The week-long event is full of speeches, breakout sessions and celebrations. The week began with a speech from the keynote speaker, Anthony Hinton, a man who spent 30 years on Alabama’s death row for a crime he did not commit. He wrote a book on how he forgave and maintained a sense of dignity for himself and what it looked like for him throughout his life both in and out of prison.
Tuesday and Thursday host the break-out sessions, which are lectures, panels and discussions all being held in the Krannert Ballrooms. Julie McCluskey, assistant director of programming and partnerships for the Office of Belonging and Community Engagement, said she was looking forward to one of the sessions that was held on Tuesday, a speech from Malaka Gharib, a Filipino-Egyptian graphic novelist.
“She’s a first generation Filipino-Egyptian American, and she split her time between California and Egypt, and so her perspective is really, really fascinating to hear,” McCluskey said. “What it was like growing up in California with her background, and what that meant for her as she grew up and was trying to figure out what her identity was. She is an artist, but she’s not formally trained, so her artwork is interesting to look at.”
Other notable speakers include Mary “Missy” Crowe, an environmental activist, Danielle Coke Balfour of “Oh Happy Dani,” an activist artist, and Bernat Rosner, a Holocaust survivor and author who will be speaking on Thursday.
“[Rosner] lost his entire family during the Holocaust,” McCluskey said. “He was in Auschwitz, and then he moved to the United States, and at one point in his life, he met a man that he worked with who happened to be, I believe, is the son of a Nazi soldier. They became friends, and they wrote a book together called ‘An Uncommon Friendship: From Opposite Sides of the Holocaust.’”
A few of the break-out sessions are partnered with organizations within Floyd County. Cook believes that partners within the community are important to expand knowledge on topics that may not be well known.
“We really tried to think about people that would be impactful, especially for our community, and providing a perspective that might be different,” Cook said.
The session “Human Trafficking & Human Rights: A Call to Action” is partnered with End Slavery Georgia to educate how trafficking is affecting the community around Berry and how to prevent it.
“We have partners in our community that deal with sex trafficking and human trafficking, and I feel like subjects like that are something you recognize that students might not know about at all,” Cook said. “Before I talked to them, I didn’t even recognize that was a thing in Rome, let alone across the street. People are dealing with this every day, and it’s something that the first time I heard about it, it shocked me, but I was so moved.”
The staff behind Solidarity Week try their best to keep the events fresh and exciting for students and this year, that addition comes in the form of an art-show. The art show and fashion show play the role of celebrations for the community.
Junior Gaile Anasco, student director for programming and co-chair of Solidarity Week, acknowledges that Berry students also have valuable stories and experiences to express and that is why the art show and fashion show are important.
“We want to value students here too,” Anasco said. “Talking about [the] fashion show, we want them to represent themselves and feel confident and in the art show too because they can share their talents throughout that.”
McCluskey hopes that Solidarity Week will fully allow students to engage each other with difficult but important conversations.
“I think conversation is always a good thing, even if the topic is really difficult,” McCluskey said. “I think what I want our students to take with them is that even if the topic is difficult or if there’s a disagreement about certain things. It’s very important to keep continuing it because it helps you in every aspect of your life.”