The weekend’s Unity Celebration showcased diversity across campus.

The Latino Student Alliance hosted NIU’s first Unity Conference and Celebration in the hope that it would bring the student population closer. On Friday, a celebration was held in the Martin Luther King Commons featuring performances by student and community organizations. The conference was held on Saturday.

The celebration and conference were influenced by the works of Paulo Freire, a Brazilian educator and revolutionist. Instructor Molly Swick said the Unity Celebration started when a group of instructors went to a conference in Chicago to hear Freirian scholar Antonia Darder speak.

“We were all so moved that we thought, ‘We need to bring her to NIU.’ And so we said ‘Why don’t we have a unity conference?’ And then we thought, ‘Why not have a unity celebration and conference?’ And it just grew from there,” Swick said.

Lizy Garcia, freshman community leadership and civic engagement major, is a member of the Latino Student Alliance and was setting up the day of the celebration.

“The best part was seeing all the volunteers getting ready to set things up, and we’d get a few people who were just walking by and would offer to help us out and they hadn’t even signed up or anything. It was nice to see NIU students helping each other out,” Garcia said.

The celebration featured tables set up with displays presented by EPFE 201 students. Students in the class — education as an agent for change, which is taught by Swick — talked about historical figures who made a difference in their time.

Freshman biology major Katrina Le stopped by Friday’s event. She said the celebration was interesting because it honored diversity within NIU’s campus.

“Everyone says that there’s a lot of diversity on campus, but you never really see people coming together, so to see a celebration about unity and diversity is really interesting,” Le said.

Swick believed that the conference would benefit NIU by bringing the campus community closer.

“We have a very diverse student populace, and we have an opportunity to show that we can bring all different types of people together and celebrate our differences,” she said.

“If we start seeing each other as human beings, then we start feeling more connected, and when human beings feel connected, they are more likely to be empowered, and they are more likely to get involved in making a better world.”

Swick, whose dissertation topic was on Freire’s work, believes in his philosophy and tried to implement these in the celebration.

“Freire believed that love is the emotional element that drives a humanizing education,” Swick said. “His ideas support my belief that love is fundamental to teaching for social change. He emphasized the importance of hope and believed that all great movements must begin with hope, driven by love and humility.”