Multicultural Student Leadership Council

By: Melina Khan

As an international student, Anesu Mhene, a senior legal studies major, already had an interest in diversity education when she began at Quinnipiac University four years ago. When she struggled to find a multicultural student organization that connected with her, a professor referred her to the Multicultural Student Leadership Council.

“Before joining MSLC and finding out about it, I really hadn’t found one org that clicked with me and resonated with my identity and my experiences,” said Mhene, MSLC’s president. “I really just love the idea that MSLC brings together all the multicultural orgs.”

MSLC is a leadership body representing that represents 15 multicultural organizations at Quinnipiac through advocacy, awareness and events. Mhene said she appreciates that the organization promotes appreciation of all backgrounds, rather than honing in on one culture.

“It’s not really focusing on one specific thing, but we can kind of take different parts of different cultures and highlight them whenever it feels relevant and necessary,” Mhene said. “That’s really what made me want to learn more about other cultures, and also just be able to participate in a way that wasn’t exclusive to what I identify with, but also be able to understand other people’s cultures and perspectives.”

Mhene said MSLC’s work primarily focuses on building awareness of the multicultural organizations on campus. Because Quinnipiac is a predominantly white institution, Mhene said many students aren’t aware of the work of these groups.

“The people that are part of the multicultural organizations are very passionate, and go to the events, (but) outside of a certain sphere of people, there really is limited cross-cultural interactions,” Mhene said.

To promote such interactions, MSLC hosts various events throughout the year to unite and bring students and multicultural organizations together. On March 23, MSLC hosted Culture Night, which gathered all the groups for food, trivia and dancing.

“When you have something that’s just a culture night that’s not really pertaining to one particular culture, (it) can really make it a little bit less intimidating for somebody that’s not really sure about different cultures (or) they haven’t really been exposed to that from their previous background,” Mhene said. “So I think that’s one thing that helps having the (MSLC).”