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Since 2019, the Center for Race, Ethnicity, and Diversity Education (CREDE) has celebrated Multiracial Awareness Week to “focus on bringing to light the perspectives, experiences and identities of our multiracial community at ���ϲ����� and in the wider world.” This year, the week featured three events — Crafts & Conversation, Trivia Night and the Mindfulness Workshop.

“I believe the celebration is important in relation to serving ���ϲ�����’s values of fostering understanding across those of different identities,” said George Dou, assistant director of the CREDE. “It’s important to demonstrate our commitment to serving the student body.”

Dou states that those who identify as multiracial are one of the fastest-growing groups in the United States. It’s meaningful, he said, to proactively support multiracial communities and recognize it as a growing need, not just at ���ϲ�����, but nationally as well.

By its mission, the CREDE, “fosters the empowerment, well-being and holistic growth of ALANAM (African American/Black, Latinx/Hispanic, Asian, Pacific Islander, Native American, Alaskan Native and Multiracial) students.” Events like those featured in Multiracial Awareness Week help the university explore and celebrate a deeper understanding of the diverse identities of others.

Maylee Clerici ‘26 is a student coordinator for multiracial initiatives and is proud to offer an awareness week to campus that will contribute to a more inclusive community at ���ϲ����� and beyond. “This week holds significant importance for me,” Clerici said. “This kind of support and recognition was absent during my high school years.”

She values the opportunity to celebrate the experiences, identities and perspectives of the multiracial community through these types of programming opportunities.

Assistant Professor of Performing Arts Courtney Liu along with Clerici co-hosted the interactive and engaging Crafts & Conversation this year for the awareness week. In 2023, Liu offered Lunch & Learn: Multiracial & the Arts, a lunch discussion exploring multiracial heritage and artmaking.

“I want the students to have a moment where they can sense a language in color and shape and relationship between color and shape and maybe even texture and not need to put a label on it,” Liu said. “I think the metaphor of it being a part of Multiracial Awareness Week is that multi-racial identity is a mixing of different things.”

Liu wanted to share collaging with others during the event because it’s a practice that helps her build instinct and identities in dance. She will collect scraps for a period of time and, once ready for use, she can reflect on what her sensibilities and her choice in aesthetics were in the time she saved the scrap, whether a week, year or longer ago.

“Whatever your creative outlets are, whatever your creative expressions may be, collaging can really help as a baseline,” Liu added. Her medium of dance is nonverbal and this practice of collaging can build words, images and associations to inform a new dance routine.

Just as collaging inherently produces unique results, Liu and others recognize that identities, especially multiracial identities, can similarly emerge uniquely depending on the time and space.

“What I appreciate about the work is getting the chance to allow students to fully express themselves,” Dou said. “Often, we hear students feel as if they can only claim one part of themselves, or that they are not ‘enough’. This awareness week gives us a chance to let students know that they are not limited to celebrating only one of their identities.”