GSA Culture Night brought the bulgogi and Brazilian Batalá drummers

The annual GSA Culture Night ended with a heart-pounding performance by Batalá drummers. Photo by Hussain Hijazi / Pella Gallerie Productions

A full 40 percent of Rice’s graduate students hail from abroad, according to the Office of International Students and Scholars. Rice’s graduate student cohort represents 73 different countries, from Albania to Zimbabwe. No surprise, then, that the Graduate Student Association‘s annual Culture Night was well-attended Feb. 16.

The GSA’s popular celebration of multicultural diversity invites fellow graduate students to share their manifold backgrounds with one another. This year, a dozen campus cultural organizations served food and snacks in the Graduate Commons outside Keck Hall.

The courtyard was filled with colorful Japanese kimonos and Indian saris while students snacked on spicy Szechuan cuisine and filled plates with Korean kimchi and bulgogi. As the sun set and the fairy lights strung through the trees flickered to life, guests enjoyed a performance by K-pop dance crew BASYK and danced along to traditional Mexican music from Mariachi Luna Llena. The evening closed with a joyous commotion courtesy of a host of Brazilian Batalá drummers.

“Culture Night was an amazing event this year, despite some sprinklings of rain,” said Sydney Gibson, GSA president. “All of our graduate clubs, small and large, really blew us away with their delicious food. My personal highlights were the fried plantains at the Black Graduate Student Association booth and the batalá dance performance hosted by the Brazilian Student Association.”

Student associations represented at this year’s Culture Night included the Brazilian Student Association, the Black Graduate Student Association, Indian Students at Rice, the Korean Graduate Student Association, the Latin American Graduate Student Association, the Rice Chinese Students and Scholars Association, the Queer Graduate Student Association, the Rice Iranian Society and the Rice Taiwanese Student Association.

“I would like to credit Office of International Students and Scholars, Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies and Student Activities with their generous assistance with putting this event together,” said Yuseon Kim, international student outreach director for the GSA, who helped organize the event.

Find more photos from Culture Night at the GSA’s Facebook page.