Vincent Lawrence Peralta ‘25, president of Mercer's Filipino Student Association, was not expecting over 200 people to attend the Multicultural Night Market, but that is exactly what happened on Oct. 30 as students streamed into Penfield Hall to enjoy Mercer’s first annual Multicultural Night Market. The event was hosted by Mercer’s Asian Multicultural Student Organization (MASALA).
"MASALA is all the Asian student organizations combined under this one umbrella term. We wanted to create this giant organization to have all of these minority groups represented,” Peralta said.
Participating clubs represented themselves at the Night Market by serving homemade cultural meals and desserts to attendees.
“This is the first time during my time here at Mercer that we've done this event, it's been so much fun. We, the Vietnamese Student Association, brought Chè Thái. It’s a Vietnamese dessert with dairy and a lot of different exotic fruits and herbal jelly,” said Eileen Lin ‘26, the vice president of the Vietnamese Student Association.
MASALA hopes to host more events in the future to promote their clubs and the culture of South Asian and Middle Eastern students at Mercer.
“Many minorities aren’t encouraged to show their culture. I feel like this event shows how all our cultures can be brought together. It allows not just people of Asian descent but everyone can come and try these different cultural foods. We should all share our culture and be open-minded,” Lin said.
Being so close to Halloween, MASALA threw a costume contest at the market. Competing students wore creative Halloween costumes or dressed in traditional Asian garments. The winner of the costume contest was a young boy dressed as Bumblebee from the Transformers franchise.
“I don't think we have anything else like this at Mercer when it comes to bringing cultures together. It felt like I had a place on campus where I actually felt the community that I was more familiar with, and people actually had an understanding of where I'm coming from,” Sophia Petallar ‘26, vice president of the Filipino Student Association, said.
Mia Kirkwood ‘28 is a Journalism and Marketing student with a passion for writing and reporting. In their free time, they love to engage in poetry writing competitions and work on their spirituality.
