A boba tea party was held in the HCIC on Friday, Feb. 11 at 2 p.m. to celebrate Lunar New Year. The event was sponsored by several campus organizations, including the Asian American Student Association, Chinese Club, the Honors Social Planning Board, Korean Culture Club, WKU Global Learning and the Modern Languages department.

The event featured an information station where students took a survey to record their attendance, interview stations, Asian snack tables and boba tea stations with the flavors taro, mango, strawberry and banana.

“It’s important to incorporate other aspects of culture because it helps us to understand and grow,” Maeve Wilcox, a junior Chinese major and president of the Chinese Club, said. “It also creates a community for others studying a language and connects others over shared interests.”

The large event brought out a crowd of many students, both inside and outside the modern languages department. This provided an opportunity for students to showcase their culture to these students outside the department.

“We’re holding this mainly to promote Asian culture on campus, it’s a great opportunity to show it off,” Noah Lyles, a junior political science major and president of the Asian American Student Association, said. “It shows where we [Asian American students] came from and gives us the chance to interact as a whole.”

WKU’s Chinese language and flagship programs are some of the most prominent language opportunities for students at WKU. Ke Peng, director of the Chinese Flagship, explained how important this event was for the new semester.

“First of all, this event has had the best timing, since Lunar New Year was just celebrated. It’s the best time for students to celebrate the last year, and we needed a special occasion to say goodbye to the challenges we faced last year,” Peng said. “We’re also having a lot of smaller events to celebrate, and this is a social event to give the students more time to interact.”

Peng also spoke on how vital campus events like this one are to returning student interaction after the pandemic has limited involvement.

“People have kind of forgotten how to actually communicate, and this is good practice to remember how great these personal connections can be,” Peng said. “It’s amazing how great we can be when staying together and getting connected.”

News reporter Alexandria Anderson can be reached at [email protected].