This past week, from Sept. 23 to Sept. 27, Villanova’s Student Government Association hosted its annual Inclusion Week. There were various events around campus that strived to promote inclusion and understanding, following Villanova’s message of diversity, equity and inclusion.
Inclusion Week strives to highlight many of the marginalized groups on campus, in all aspects. From women’s leadership-themed Quizzo, to pronoun bracelet-making, to Hispanic Heritage Night in Spit, this week represented awareness and acceptance on campus.
Kirti Kaur, the Director of Inclusion Week 2024, spoke on the events.
“The Inclusion Week Initiative aims to raise awareness of organizations that support and advocate for marginalized and underrepresented peoples and promote the various resources available to students from these groups,” Kaur said.
The week is for all Villanovans to enjoy and be educated, but works towards a deeper purpose of providing opportunities for organizations that may be more overlooked.
“Many multicultural and affinity-based student organizations get negligible funding from the school, which hinders their ability to organize student events,” Kaur said. “We aim to bridge the financial gap and bring resources and programming support to such organizations to create a week of fun and educational events.”
The Inclusion Week Committee is composed of five teams: Directors; Events and Entertainment; Marketing and Communications; Student and Professional Outreach; and Engagement. The student staff worked tirelessly to organize the events of Inclusion Week, as Kaur said.
“An intensive amount of outreach, budgeting and programming work goes into fitting more than twenty events into only five days,” Kaur said.
Inclusion Week concluded with the Inclusion Week Festival on Friday, Sept. 27, also serving as the beginning to Family Weekend.
“Perhaps the hardest thing to plan during Inclusion Week is our Inclusion Week Festival,” Kaur said. “This year, [we had] music, food trucks from different cultures, carnival attractions and a stroll fest involving culturally-based fraternal organizations.”