Kean Holds Unity Week
By Vera Boateng
Unity week was the themed week, which held free events offered by Kean University’s Student Organization and Student Government.
“The events were to highlight the unity of majors, faculty and to get people involved no matter where
they were going,” said Vice President of Programming for Student Organization, Shadaylah Byrd.
Student Organization is a branch of Kean’s Student Government. The two organizations along with others, have worked in conjunction since 1997 to stage events for the week. This was to help bring students and faculty come together and unify. Although the name of the week changes and Kean Student Government and Kean Student Organization don’t always stage the events, they happen annually.
This year Student Organization’s big event was on Thursday, which featured a famous comedian, Roy Wood Jr. Some events that have been staged by Student Organization in the past were: popular musical concerts, and having other famous guest speakers come to Kean.
The unity related events started on Monday, March 17 and ended on Friday, March 21. The locations for the events were in the main lobbies of: CAS, East Campus, STEM building, University Center (UC) and Harwood Arena to name a few.
“The vendors and activities were in the main lobbies so that the students, or whoever was interested in the activities, wouldn’t have to go far to participate in them”, said The Treasurer of Student Organization, Shaquan Page.
Some of the free events included: Free Dippin’ Dots ice cream, A license plate maker station, a smoothie station, A chocolate fondue station and a fun face-on-body swapping activity station.
“At the chocolate fondue station they would give you fruit or pretzels to dip in it, that was cool,” said Sean Hurley, a student who attended the event.
The Cougar’s Den re-opened during Unity Week and had Wood, who has appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman, HBO, Comedy Central, NBC, The E! Network, and TBS, perform. The comedian made his debut in 2002 on Comedy Central’s Laugh Riots, a competition out of Los Angeles, California.
The Cougar’s Den, a restaurant located in The University Center across from the game room, remodeled the dining area and put in some new furniture. Other renovations included new doors on the right side of the dining area, new glass windows and a new sign for the back entrance of the restaurant. The remodeling has been taking place since Sept. 3 2013, the start of the 2013 Fall semester at Kean.
A contest that was held during Unity Week was to take a photo that you felt best represents unity at Kean and to post it on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. With the photo you had to include a caption and the hashtag “#KeanUnity”. The photo that had the most Retweets and likes together would be declared as the winner.
The winner of this contest was Karen Damoah, a Kean University student. The prize granted to the winner was unidentified. The Graduate Part-Time Student Council along with Student Government conducted the contest.