Happy Late Dia De Los Muertos (November 1st)! Also known as Day of the Dead, Dia De Los Muertos celebrates the memory of dead relatives and friends through prayer, gifts, and visitation to gravesites. Another well known tradition during this holiday is creating alters (or ofrendas) inside or near the home to remember loved-ones. Latino Exchange, one of TDC's Associate Groups built an altar in Coates for use by anyone at Trinity. Another interesting Dia De Los Muertos altar was erected by Storch Memorial Building to honor Possum, a recently deceased cat. Check them out (and add to them) while you still can!
Also, Tuesday night was a new TDC Executive Meeting, where we learned about the United States President Obama's visit to India. The debate centered on Obama's refusal to visit India's Sikh Golden Temple and the possible political reasons behind not visiting this historic site. Our fearless discussion leader found the political statement “we can never do as many events as we’d like to do” to be an inappropriate excuse for sure an important holy site (
SALDEF news brief). According to the Daily Mail, the President might have canceled his visit because it might make citizens see this act as proof that he is Muslim. We discussed why this would be (and shouldn't be) an issue for Obama, to have other people perceive him as a secret worshiper of Islam. Another issue that was brought up was the distinction between the Sikh faith and the Muslim faith: "The temple - called Harmandir Sahib - is the spiritual centre of the Sikh religion and one of India's most popular tourist attractions" (
Daily Mail Reporting). However, the concern was that the public would infer Obama is Muslim- because he will need to cover his head out of respect- even though the temple is for Sikh worshipers, not Muslim ones. Obama's running from a possible controversy (if indeed he is), is disappointing for America as a whole because instead of an illuminating conversation about the intersection of religion and stereotypes, we instead get denial and fear.
*If you would like to voice your opinion about the White House's decision not to visit Harmandir Sahbib, see the SALDEF news brief for more information. *
Well, Friday was the Carnival at Prassel Lawn! There was plenty of jumping in bouncy castle's, eating too much cotton candy, playing games, winning prizes, and acting like, well, kids again. The facepainting, balloon animals, and especially henna were a hit with carnival goers (shout out to Divina and Tanvi for applying henna until their own hands were numb). People enjoyed our guest booths: Trinity University Volunteer Action Community (TUVAC) had two groups, Habitat for Humanity built gingerbread houses and the Cancer Awareness group tie-dyed shirts; Association of Student Representatives (ASR) did a knock down the cans game that I couldn't hit to save my life; and Society of Women Engineers (SWE) did a dart balloon pop game.There was also a cake walk, duck pond game, bucket toss game, guess the number of toothpicks, and booths for TDC and SPB. Congrats to everyone who won a raffle prize and hope everyone else had a great time!
