The Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration has become a tradition on the Syracuse University campus for the past three decades. This year we’re lucky enough to have comedian Trevor Noah come to SU to celebrate the civil rights movement.

The celebration is important, and everyone should try to attend. If you aren’t available, encourage your friends to go and promote the celebration on social media.

“Social media is one means of reaching students. We heavily leverage news.syr.edu, SU Today, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. As we have in years past, we share a lot of information about the celebration on these channels with the goal of driving interest and participation in the event,” Delaney Van Wey, communications specialist at Hendricks Chapel said in an email.

Van Wey said that the majority of Syracuse community members that attend the MLK celebration are local high school students. High school students look up to us college students. SU students should encourage high school students to attend by promoting the event and attending it ourselves.

Students should attend the event and encourage attendance so that the tradition of celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. on the SU campus continues.

“Money from ticket sales goes toward offsetting the cost of staging the event. There are considerable expenses involved in staging an event the size of the MLK Celebration — from the Dome’s event logistics (utilities, staging, audio/video, security, ushers, clean up et al.) to Food Services (preparing and serving the dinner, paying Food Services staff and student servers) to costs associated with each year’s special guest (appearance fee, travel and accommodations),” Van Wey said in an email.

There is no excuse for not attending this important event — SU has done a great job at making the event accessible for all.

If you cannot make it due to financial reasons, Hendricks Chapel has offered SU students options. Van Wey said that if you are a STEM, first year or transfer student, it’s free for you to attend. If you’re a community member, Hendricks Chapel may be able to provide you with a discount.

Tangible things to do can include retweeting the time and location the celebration will take place on twitter or verbally spreading the word. Get involved. SU students have no excuse not to promote this important celebration.

Maria Sanchez is a sophomore communication, rhetoric studies and political science dual major. Her column appears biweekly. She can be reached at mfsanche@syr.edu.

Published on January 22, 2019 at 9:00 pm