Fall 2010 Week 4

Week 4

            Hello again Readers, and welcome to another edition of Student Lens, a student’s perspective on the latest happenings within the Latino student community here at the University of Connecticut.

            With week 4 coming to a close midterm fever is just starting up so it’s no surprise that everyone is a little short on time with long To-Do lists, especially with Lipsync just around the corner.

            For those who may not know what LipSync is, let me give you a brief overview. LipSync is one of the largest annual events here at UConn. Every year a theme is designated for homecoming and within that theme the various student groups, cultural centers and Greek organizations pick smaller themes within it to portray. For example, last years over arching homecoming theme was a Spoonful of Fun so every group chose a different cereal to portray. From there, each organization comes up with an 8-minute mini-musical to perform in front of the entire university in a contest we like to call LipSync. During each musical number students dance and then have lip-syncing performers who play to the crowd. This event takes weeks of planning and practice and in the end the payoff is great but this brings me to an issue a lot of students have on campus. LipSync this year will be on Sept. 30^th, the year before that it was during the first week in October, and the years prior to that it was during the second or third week of October. Most of us are still getting into the swing of thing and then to have to plan LipSync and homecoming events on top of that isn’t exactly conducive to our educational careers. Perhaps we as a university should really consider the older LipSync dates as an option for next year. With studying, Homecoming, and the hundreds of other responsibilities here on campus I think I speak for everyone when I say, “Having LipSync pushed up 3 weeks is a lot more stress than any of us need right now.”

           

I suggest everyone attend at least one LipSync during his or her college careers but in case you miss this year’s festivities I’ll post a full synopsis of the event on next week's post so be on the lookout.

            Another responsibility that some of us within the Puerto Rican Latin American Cultural Center along with the Asian American Cutural Center have is KUBE (Kids and UConn Bridging Education). KUBE is a program where students here on campus connect with students between 4^th and 8^th grade from Killingly and Windham public schools. One Saturday a month our “Bigs” (mentors) meet with their pre-assigned Littles (mentees) and participate in a day of fun-filled activities here at the University. Originally this program was strictly a partnership between the Asian American Cultural Center and Killingly Public Schools, but for the past two years we at the Puerto Rican Latin American Cultural Center, and the students from Windham Public Schools have been invited to join the program and it has been a huge success. Each KUBE day we have a theme and we schedule activities to go along with that theme. For example, this past KUBE day we celebrated Hispanic Heritage Month. Throughout the day we showed the students different aspects of the Hispanic and Latino Culture, activities included piñata hitting, salsa lessons (provided by yours truly), maraca making, and culminating with some tres leches (three milks) cake a delicious Latin-American treat. KUBE has been going strong for 15 years now and I know that with such strong community collaboration behind it, it'll keep going for at least 15 more.

For more information about KUBE feel free to visit: http://asacc.uconn.edu/programs/kube.php   

Or simply stop by the Asian American or Puerto Rican Latin American Cultural Centers located on the fourth floor of the Student Union.

            As I said earlier, be on the look for a full rundown of the upcoming LipSync celebration and I wish all of you good luck on midterms, I know I’ll be paying frequent visit to good ‘ol Homer Babbidge for the next few days as well.