The University of Rhode Island South Asian Student Association hosted its annual fall banquet with the theme of love and light in the Memorial Union Ballroom on Sunday.
Individuals decorated the ballroom accordingly with candles, sparkly table decor and yellow flowers. Music from a playlist made by fourth-year SASA member Asha Bahross played in the background.
The event opened with appetizers from Rasa restaurant, including samosas and cauliflower and concluded with dinner and an open dance floor.
SASA President Kalsoom Fatima gave a speech, recalling how she came to her first event for the free food but stayed for the community.
“It felt familiar, like a piece of home,” Fatima said.
Members performed dances throughout the night, including a Bollywood dance mashup, a traditional Indian folk dance and a traditional Bengali dance.
Open to friends and family, SASA members saw many supporters at the event, with one family travelling from New York to support their daughter.
Various club members gave speeches including themes of community, love and light and forming lifelong friendships.
Fundraising Chair Krisha Patel’s mother, Mona Patel, took time off from her work as a nurse to watch her daughter perform modern Indian dances.
“Bringing parents into this event is huge, because it’s a pride for parents to come and see their children doing this in the United States,” Mona Patel said.
The event and work SASA does is a way for students to come together and spread Indian culture in the United States, according to Mona Patel, who feared her daughter would forget Indian culture while at college.
“When I first had my daughter put into URI, I was kind of afraid [of] if she was going to meet the Indian community or not,” Mona Patel said. “I just wanted to make sure that she doesn’t miss that piece that we have carried on all this time.”
Markeisha Miner, vice president of community, equity and diversity, was also in attendance.
“[SASA does] a great job of highlighting various aspects of diversity, whether it’s through the dances, or through the welcomes and the speeches to various attire,” Miner said. “There is diversity in diversity. Diversity is not just one aspect of our identity. It’s all of it. It’s language, it’s culture, it’s faith, it’s what we eat.”
URI’s community is special because people show up for and support one another, Miner said.
Club member Asha Bahross, a fourth-year student from Los Angeles, has been involved in SASA since she was a first-year. Because the club was so small at the time, Bahross joined the executive board of SASA for her first two years.
“This is the most incredible thing, to know there is a waitlist for this event now, and there’s over 100 RSVPS,” Bahross said. “It makes me so happy.”
URI is not very culturally diverse, according to Bahross.
“I came to URI and I was like, it’s the most important thing ever to me that I find people who look like me, who need a community of Indian people the way that I do,” Bahross said.
The banquet is a rewarding night and friends of members attend each year, according to Bahross.
First-year student Sonali Searles has been participating in SASA events as a dancer since before she was admitted. Searles’ mom, a professor at URI, was in attendance.
Promoting SASA to the wider community could help contribute to URI’s cultural diversity, according to Searles.
It is important for URI to call attention to events like the banquet, and students should seek out the opportunity of attending cultural events, according to Meilin Reyes, president of the URI student senate.
“I would really love to see these events more broadcasted out to the world,” Reyes said. “Really putting it out there on all our social media [accounts], making sure that people all over can see that URI is not just URI, but it’s a community of such diverse cultures.”
For information on future SASA events, visit @sasa_uri on Instagram.
