Students gathered for Unity Day in the media center for a quarterly event designed to connect students through communication and empathy. The event occurred on Sept. 19.

Club President Hannah Diasti, senior, hosted the first 2016-2017 Unity day, “We have one unity day a quarter so there’s four days a year; every year we try to bring the school together, I mean our motto is strength through unity.” Diasti said

“In this unity day we have all of our new members, so we have people who applied to be in SAC. It’s a diverse group of students with different religions, life experiences, grades and ethnicities. They’re here to meet each other, learn from each other and unify as one,” Diasti said.

Diasti comments, “We do lots of games throughout the day to make it more fun and interactive, but we also have more serious parts where we talk about stereotypes, discrimination and individual differences and experiences — how that pushes us away and pulls us together.”

Vice President Sharon Rivas, senior, had her own take on the event, “The main goal here is to get everyone unified, break down the barriers of stereotypes, and get everyone on the same page,” Rivas said.

“I’m excited to see everybody open up,” Rivas said, “My group was shy at first but is already opening up, and I feel like I know these people.”

“Unity day is pretty fun. You get to meet a lot of new people and talk to them about real issues and stereotypes and just be unified,” Unity Day participant Carson Murray, junior said.

Murray found the power of the event is evident, “What stuck out to me is how willing people are to talk to each other even though they’re complete strangers, that’s really cool,” Murray said.

Murry also notes progress, “If you were able to get every student at plant to do this at least once, that would be great. It would be a step towards unification for everybody,” Murray said.

Jason Xu, junior, comments on the event saying, “This has been great, I’ve actually been learning things about different groups of people that I wouldn’t assume to be false if I didn’t come.”

Xu notes the importance of representation as well, “This is a place where people can come together and be like, ‘Hey, this is not us,’ or, ‘Hey, this is us,’ depending on the subject that we’re talking about,” Xu said.

Tori Underwood, senior, is focused on inclusion through communication and comfort. “If you’re new here, and you don’t know anyone, you want to make friends and become more comfortable here, and maybe leave a little more educated than you were before you came,” Underwood said.

Underwood comments on a lack of diversity elsewhere as well, saying, “A lot of clubs don’t have a good mixture of people, but here, we have a lot of minorities since this is a Student Advisory Club. A lot of students don’t want to sign up for sac, but you should do it. Come here, have fun, have food and maybe cry a little bit, but it’s fun.”