New year, new section. This semester will kick off with a new section covering only cultural topics. It will cover Black History Month events to VIBES, music reviews, and culturally impactful films. 

This section was created by splitting the mint arts and culture section. The new “culture” section will put the spotlight on different cultural communities within the Palouse area and highlight members within those communities. 

In my time at The Daily Evergreen, I found there has been a lack of representation in coverage within our multicultural, international and other underrepresented groups in the Palouse area. So, after chatting with the editor-in-chief and others in the newspaper, the culture section was created to ensure those groups had adequate representation just as anyone else would.

As the new editor for this section, I plan to capture as many events as possible and showcase a wide variety of members of all different cultural communities. In addition, I want to showcase parts of these communities that are frequently not covered. 

The section will cover events like Children of Aztlan Sharing Higher Education (CASHE), Visionaries Inspiring Black Empowered Students (V.I.B.E.S), College Assistance Migrant Program (CAMP), Pacific Islander Cultural Exhibition and International Student Council events. The section will also be doing multiple series of features on different members of multicultural communities at WSU. Finally, the culture section will also cover music and movie reviews relating to cultural topics. 

I thought about this position a lot while writing last semester. I found out that multiple large cultural events that occurred on campus had never been covered in their long years of service to the community. So, throughout the semester, I continued to cover these events and my excitement never died down. 

There are so many fun events, workshops, food and communities in our area that deserve recognition and exposure. So this semester, I challenge everyone to attend an event for a culture, not their own. You may try things like Dalgona cookies or fresh takoyaki from campus. Maybe even listen to captivating world artists speak about their works. You will never know how enjoyable it is unless you go. 

As the section grows and continues in the future, I hope that people continue to want to cover these events and showcase the diversity in Pullman. It truly is astounding all of the different people and cultures in our community. Everyone has such amazing stories to tell and cultural traditions that they want to share. How could I be anything but excited?