This year’s annual Friendsgiving potluck, hosted by the Queer Student Program (QSP), African American and Latino Scholars Program (AALSP) and AAPI Leadership & Affinity Program (LEAP) took place on Thursday, Nov. 21. The event helped build community by bringing together many students from different backgrounds.
According to social studies teacher and QSP leader Kate Leslie, Thanksgiving isn’t always a positive experience for many students who identify as queer, have immigrant families or are of Indigenous descent. She said that for this reason, the Friendsgiving potluck strived to create a safe space for everyone.
“It’s just a chance to come together and enjoy good company, to have some celebration in a time that can be really emotional or can be tough for a lot of students and to build connections across different programs,” Leslie said.
Sophomore Valkyrie Sánchez was an attendee of Friendsgiving, which they thought was exciting and lively.
“It’s important for people to have these events so that they can connect and make friends, especially within the LGBT community where it’s kind of hard for kids to connect,” Sánchez said.
Besides just putting students and teachers together into a room with the promise of food, the potluck helped bring together people from different groups and backgrounds, social studies teacher Sydney Hou said.
“We often also talk to each other about how, with affinity programs, a lot of times people feel like we’re pushing students apart or we’re siloing them,” Hou said. “But that’s why it’s so important for us to have these events to show [that] you can be Asian and queer, and there is space for us to be in our own spaces in the ways that we need, whether it’s racial identity or your sexuality. But there’s also spaces for you to converge and live in that intersectionality and to have all of your identities be loved and celebrated.”
After most people had filled their plates and the table previously laden with food began to empty, math teacher Adam Fried began a game of trivia for the remaining students. According to Fried, the trivia night was a way to give people something to do and take away the awkward feeling.
“It’s just a way to get groups of people together on teams, either groups of friends who already know each other or groups of friends who don’t necessarily know each other, and so they don’t know these friends yet, just to sort of mix people up and have people have some fun,” Fried said.
Junior William Xuan, a member of LEAP, decided to attend the celebration to meet and bond with new people in other affinity programs.
“I would say it’s been very happy so far, it’s very inclusive,” Xuan said. “I’ve seen some environments that are not that inclusive, but here I feel it’s a very safe space that allows people to express their opinion.”
