Dining Hall attendees on the night of October 11 noticed the music and laughter coming from the HUB Social Hall. Bollywood Night, Dickinson’s South Asian Cultural Club with the help of the Popel Shaw Center and the Center for Spirituality and Justice was a roaring success and celebration of South Asian culture at Dickinson.
“We’re just trying to get South Asian Cultural Club on the Dickinson Campus’ map,” said Soumya Bathla ’28, the club’s social media chair.
Fathima Mohammadi ’27, one of the club’s co-presidents, emphasized, “We want to aim to have our events be open to everyone.”
The club certainly achieved its goals. People came in and out all night in different cultural formal wear. Guests raved about the food, which was catered by Mt. Everest Nepali and Indian Cuisine in Harrisburg. The atmosphere was warm and inviting, with multiple “Diya Deco” stations where guests could decorate and take home ceramic diyas typically used as traditional bowls for Diwali. Though the club couldn’t provide actual candles for the diyas or the decor, they were still able to create quite the atmosphere with the use of LED candles and immaculate table and wall decor.
“In a lot of South Asian Culture, we call big weddings or big birthday parties functions, and it’s something that everyone gets sort of hype for and I feel like people should feel that way when they come here,” said Bathla.
“We want people to enjoy the night so much that they want this to be a yearly thing,” said Mohammadi.
The event also featured a photobooth with props which saw use all night and a dancefloor which lit up with singing and dancing after all the food had been eaten. SACC chose Bollywood as their central theme due to its wide reach and influence. “Bollywood itself is very globalized and you can see it, it’s prevalent through a lot of different countries, it’s seen everywhere,” said Bathla.
SACC is open to and welcomes new members, regardless if they’re South Asian or not. The success of Bollywood night hopefully means it will be a mainstay on campus for years to come.
“We hope that it gains enough traction where it genuinely becomes a yearly thing, if not maybe even like a semester thing,” said Mohammadi.
“One of my friends was like, ‘Yeah I put my favorite Bollywood song on the form,’ and she was showing me a photo of what she was going to wear to the night, and it was just so nice to see someone very excited to be out here, and I feel like if we can gain that traction, that’d be awesome,” said Bathla.
