{"id":23783,"date":"2019-04-23T10:00:54","date_gmt":"2019-04-23T15:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/?p=23783"},"modified":"2019-04-22T10:52:32","modified_gmt":"2019-04-22T15:52:32","slug":"stronger-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/tartan-news\/2019\/04\/23\/stronger-together\/","title":{"rendered":"Stronger Together"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Ndikhokhele Bawo. Lead me, oh Father<\/em>. A traditional Xhosa song often sung during church in South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\tThis gorgeous hymn kicked off the Stronger Together meeting and really set the tone for the event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\tPeople from all walks of life gathered to partake in this beautiful moment. Students, faculty, blacks, whites, Christians, Muslims, men, women and any other group imaginable; The diversity in the room was astounding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\tThe president and vice president of the Sinclair Music Studio Association began with a speech on the importance of diversity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\t\u201cWe are here together as humanity,\u201d Dakota Nelson began. \u201cThere are all sorts of injustices that still happen because people choose to remain divided.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They begged people to look at each other with new eyes and introduced the first activity of the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\tEverybody gathered into groups and each group had a facilitator. We learned about each other and what makes us unique and what makes us similar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\tWe started off by discussing our favorite music then switching to our ideal world. We all had dreams of living in a world that didn\u2019t have such hatred and biases, such brutality towards those who are different and instead, we celebrated our individuality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\tAfter about 15 minutes, we wrapped up our conversations and went on to the next activity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\tThere was a panel of students at the front of the stage who answered questions about their experiences in life. Everyone up there was different. There was a Muslim woman, an international student, a Latina woman, a biracial woman, a member of the LGBTQ+ community and a black man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\tThe facilitators went through and asked them various questions and the students would answer at their discretion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\tThe first question posed was \u201cWhat part of your identity is most important?\u201d The black man spoke up first. He described how the very first thing people see when they look at him is the fact that he\u2019s black. Nevertheless, he loves his heritage and believes \u201cYou can\u2019t ignore who you are, so take pride in it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\tHe also spoke on how different people see him in different lights. If he\u2019s in a predominately white community, people immediately see a black man. But if he\u2019s in a predominately African American community, they just see him as him. They see his clothes, how he presents himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\tHowever, the young man also commented on how there is sometimes backlash from his community. If he speaks eloquently, he\u2019s noticed that white folk tend to think \u201cOh he\u2019s one of the good ones.\u201d Conversely, he\u2019s also faced criticism from other African Americans that say he\u2019s \u201cnot black enough.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\tThe others chimed in as well. The international student commented on how everyone immediately notices that he\u2019s Asian, the Muslim woman spoke of how everyone notices her Hijab.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\tAll of these people from different backgrounds had such similar experiences in the world and they\u2019ve all been able to bond over it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\tThe panel continued sharing their unique but shared experiences for a time, discussing how they\u2019ve adjusted to life here in Dayton, what the biggest culture shock to them was and the importance of their identities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\tThe event finally ended with Sinclair\u2019s choir belting out a fantastic rendition of John Lennon\u2019s \u201c<\/em>Imagine\u201d which was met with thunderous applause. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

An incredibly powerful song and show of unity, Stronger Together brought people from all walks of life as one and we all shared a beautiful moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Emilee Brewer
<\/strong>Intern<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ndikhokhele Bawo. Lead me, oh Father. A traditional Xhosa song often sung during church in South Africa. This gorgeous hymn kicked off the Stronger Together meeting and really set the tone for the event. People from all walks of life gathered to partake in this beautiful moment. Students, faculty, blacks, whites, Christians, Muslims, men, women […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10416,"featured_media":23789,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2102,2110,2121,2103,3],"tags":[2526,1529,1418,2702,764,2793,3250],"class_list":["post-23783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-life","category-local","category-music","category-art","category-tartan-news","tag-sinclairstrongertogether","tag-campus-events","tag-campus-life","tag-campus-news","tag-diversity","tag-emilee-brewer","tag-stronger-together"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/41329344652_281440b358_o.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-6bB","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10416"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23783"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23794,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23783\/revisions\/23794"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}