From Feb. 1 to 3, SUNY Oswego held a variety of on-campus events for a three-day celebration and commencement of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. This is the second year the university has hosted a dedicated event to celebrate the life and legacy of King. 

However, this is the first year it has been not just a single-day celebration of King, but rather three days, starting on Feb. 1 with a day of learning, followed by a celebration that included student performers and a spoken word poet on Feb. 2 and ending on Feb. 3 with community service.

Students and staff of all different campus organizations, backgrounds and cultures gathered in the Marano Campus Center for the day of service. Student Engagement and Leadership partnered with the Rise Against Hunger organization to pack meals for communities that suffer from food insecurity. 

Rise Against Hunger is dedicated to not only providing packaged meals to communities around the world but also continued support in developing a sustainable source of food once the packaged meals have been consumed.

Anthony Vaber, an events manager with the organization, was present for the last day of the MLK celebratory weekend. 

Vaber, who has been with Rise Against Hunger for nearly a year, is part of a sector that covers New York State, New Jersey, Connecticut and parts of Pennsylvania. He explained that Rise Against Hunger has the end goal of ending world hunger. 

“We do that through four pathways: nourishing lives, empowering communities, responding to emergencies, and growing the movement,” Vaber said. “As of right now, we are having a meal packing event, which is supporting the pathway of nourishing lives.” 

Rise Against Hunger is dedicated to bringing people together and letting them see a brighter future for those helping and those receiving. Vaber said that witnessing various events and being able to help others has “helped to restore faith in humanity.” 

Spread across different stations, students bagged meal components, put them into boxes, and sealed them in three different shifts beginning at 11 a.m. and ending at 3 p.m. By the end of the day, the volunteers had packed 20,080 meals. 

Kelsey Jones, the program coordinator for Student Engagement and Leadership said the goal was to pack 20,000 meals by the end of the day. She also stressed the importance of unity and listed off the various groups who had come to help. 

“It is a huge partnership today across the campus with athletic teams,” Jones said. “We have representation for field hockey, men’s and women’s tennis, our sororities and fraternities are coming out today, and we have some clubs and organizations out today like BSU, our Black Student Union, the Women’s Center, and all of them have kind of banded together towards ending food insecurity and hunger worldwide, but also in partnership with each other because this is our home and we kind of share an equal responsibility on giving back to our community.” 

The funding for this program and the MLK celebration event came from the Department of Student Engagement and Leadership, the Division of Student Affairs and The James A. Triandiflou Institute for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Transformative Practice. 

Jones expressed optimism for future events, explaining that this year’s Tree of Life will be hung in The Point beside last year’s with room for paintings in years to come. 

“We are really excited to see the three-part event come to life because it starts Thursday with learning more, then Friday with celebrating and then Saturday with action,” Jones said. “So from us at the Student Engagement and Leadership team, as an institution, we are really looking at this as a story that our students can tell while also celebrating MLK’s life and legacy, but also showing how we can be leaders in our community just like he was for his.” 

Jones was passionate about the fact that although students and faculty tend to work separately, they have the power to come together for a common goal. Uniting together despite background, association, culture or race for a common cause and the sake of others is one of the principles King stood for.

Photo via: SUNY Oswego