Photos by Ralph Freso / Slideshow
Hannah Leon doesn’t often meet anyone with the same cultural background as her. She’s Mexican and Vietnamese.
“That’s a mix you don’t find often,” said the Grand Canyon University senior advertising/graphic design major.
So she always felt drawn to the campus’s multicultural events and has spent a lot of time at the Multicultural Lounge, a hangout space in Kaibab open to everyone.
“I wanted to seek out people that are kind of the same as me, just find people similar to me,” said Leon, who joined Multicultural Life this year and serves as one of its student coordinators.
Leon was looking for community and found it with the department, which on Tuesday night ramped up Unity Week with its signature event, the Unity Walk.
About a dozen campus groups, from the ROTC, to the Commuter Lounge, to Club Sports, gathered at the Backyard – the lawn adjacent to Cactus Apartments that’s the gateway to the residence spaces on the east side of campus – just before the sun set for the annual stroll across campus.
“We do this every year to show school spirit and unity,” said senior behavioral health science major Pia Schuster, the Multicultural Life events team student coordinator. In the midst of so much political turmoil, “I feel like it’s a good time to show that we’re one campus,” she said.
That unity showed at the Backyard as the Thundering Heard Pep Band’s drum section doled out impromptu rhythms that inspired cheers from fellow students.
It was a rhythmic call to arms for the mission at hand, one that student body vice president Dianne Carla Mae Nasibog took to heart.
Nasibog, an immigrant from the Philippines who grew up in Soldotna on the Kenai Peninsula in rural Alaska, said that it’s rare for students from so many different groups to come together like this except at an athletic event.
“It just shows how many different people are on campus. We all came here for our own reasons, and a lot of the common denominator in that is to pursue Christ.
“I think it’s just so cool to see all these people from under Student Engagement, Spirit Programs and beyond just walk together," Nasibog said. "It’s such an embodiment of what we’re doing on campus – just walking with Christ and walking alongside each other.”
The group of about 300 students gathered behind Multicultural Life’s One Lope banner, then weaved through campus from the Backyard through the streets of the east side residences and down Lopes Way.
To that rhythmic beat pounded out by the pep band, students belted out, “Let’s go Lopes!” and “Olé! Olé! Olé!” And they sang tunes like “Oh When the Lopes Go Marching In,” a Lope-i-fied version of “When the Saints Go Marching In.”
“It’s Thunder!!!” one student watching the procession screamed in excitement. “Hey, Thunder!!!”
The 30-minute jaunt ended at Antelope Gymnasium, just in time for weekly student worship event the Gathering.
ROTC cadet Rosalie Menyeng Messi, a predentistry senior, said the Army is every bit a part of the world stage and that, “We have a lot of different cultures inside of the ROTC, people from different places and worlds … We wanted to join with everybody to show we’re with them,” she said.
That diversity? “I think when you look for it, you can find it, for sure,” Nasibog added of life on campus. "Even earlier in the day, the Latino Club partnered with GCU Dining (for the Hispanic Heritage Month pop-up). That was really cool to see. It’s just cool to see how many different types of people are on campus.”
According to statistics from GCU Admissions, in fall 2024, students from 91 countries attended GCU, and university President Brian Mueller said at Chapel in January that 42 different languages are spoken in a 5-mile radius around the school, which makes its home in an immigrant- and refugee-rich section of Phoenix’s West Valley.
The diversity of campus is reflected in its campus community, where more than 40% of students are people of color, including 26% Hispanic and 6% Black, according to a university press release published in August.
The Unity Walk isn’t the only event slated for Unity Week, which also will include Culture in Bloom from 6-8 p.m. today on the Kaibab lawn and the Student Engagement collaboration event from 6-9 p.m. Thursday on Prescott Field, a crafts and social bonding event that will feature painting, calligraphy, a photo booth, mocktails and more.
One group excited to join the Unity Walk was Commuter Life, neighbors to both the ROTC and Multicultural Life in Kaibab.
Business information systems senior Frankie Ramirez said Commuter Life wanted to promote diversity and represent their mission, which is inclusiveness.
“As commuter students, it’s so easy for them to feel left out because they come in and out for classes. So we promote a space for them to feel part of the community.”
Added Alex Vielmann, a senior criminal justice major who also represented Commuter Life during the walk, “No one person is better than another; no one people group is better than another. Being united is important, because if we don’t have that, then what do we have?”
Manger of Internal Communications Lana Sweeten-Shults can be reached at [email protected] or at 602-639-7901.
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Related content:
GCU News: The world comes to GCU at Culture Fest
GCU News: Project L: Welcome Week’s love letter to diversity
