KASA celebrates Korea Night
This year, the Korean American Students’ Association expanded Korea Night to not only include a traditional Korean dinner and performance, but also feature a Korean fair in Wilson Commons and a Korean Game Night.
“Everything went really well,” KASA President and senior Johnny Won said. “We had three main events instead of one, and in the years to come, we will definitely expand on this because it was so successful.”
A Korean Fair was held in Wilson Commons on March 23 where many students purchased traditional Korean rice cakes and watched Korean music videos on a big screen.
On March 25, the Go Club helped KASA play Go and Yoot-nori, a traditional Korean game, in Friel Lounge as part of Korean Game Night.
The Korean Dinner was held in Douglass Dining Center on March 26. All 100 tickets available for the event sold out.
Students enjoyed a meal catered by the Korea House Restaurant.
Korea Night was then held afterward in Strong Auditorium. Both on-campus groups, as well as groups from the community and many ethnicities were featured.
A Korean drum troupe from Syracuse University performed a traditional drum dance. Middle school girls from the community did a court dance, a traditional Korean dance.
Over 200 people attended Korea Night.
“I think everyone had a really good time, and overall we are very satisfied,” Wan said. “This was our best Korea Night yet.”
UR VEG forum threatened
via fax from URMC
A uniformed UR security officer monitored the UR Vegetarian Education Group discussion forum in the Gowen Room on March 28, after the group received a possible threat via fax from the UR Medical Center.
“A lot of information about the nature of the threat is still unknown to us,” UR VEG President Hoss Firooznia said.
Six hours before the forum began, UR VEG Student Association advisor Lydia Crews received word from UR Security that a possible threat had been sent via fax from the UR Medical Center. The fax hinted at possible disruption, or even violence.
Crews was unable to be reached for comment.
“We put up fliers advertising the event and hung some in the [UR] Medical Center so that we would get dissenting views,” Firooznia said. “We then got word that security had received a fax from URMC, including a warning and a copy of our flier. A lot of animal testing is done at UR, but it is unclear to us why someone would want to threaten this talk or this speaker.”
The guest speaker at the event, Lawrence Carter-Long, a board member of the Brooklyn Center for Independence of the Disabled, decided to go on with the event regardless of the threat.
Carter-Long is an advocate for animal protection who opposes most forms of animal experimentation.
“[Carter-Long] actually spoke about this type of reaction during his talk,” Firooznia said. “He explained that the attitude he often gets is that people don’t really want to talk about their position. They don’t want to debate the issue. We told him about the threat and he let us know that he wanted to go on with the talk as planned.”
A security officer was sent to Wilson Commons just in case. Although no disruption was actually made at the forum, UR VEG was left hurt, offended and somewhat confused by the threat.
“Of all places, a university is supposed to provide an environment where people are free to pursue honest debate and benefit from the free market of ideas,” Firooznia said. “While we’ve come to expect that outside groups may attempt to silence speech, it’s especially disturbing when such intimidation comes from within the university community itself.”
Reporting by Emily Paret.
