With the winter season upon us, many holiday celebrations and traditions are well underway. On Dec. 9, Archer’s Executive Board of Advocacy and Diversity presented a video to the entire school showcasing members of the community and their various winter celebrations. This was the first official presentation EBAD has given since the start of the school year.

The video was presented during an all-school Zoom assembly, which students watched from their mentorship rooms.

EBAD leader Chidimma Nwafor (’22) said the goal of the presentation was to inform the community of the many celebrations that are celebrated during the winter season. 

“We really wanted to make sure we represented everyone instead of just the two, three, four ‘main’ religions we normally hear about,” Nwafor said. “I think it’s important for all of us to understand that there are more members of our community who celebrate a variety of celebrations that aren’t always mentioned.”

In preparation for the video, EBAD sent out a survey to both faculty and students asking them to describe their winter celebrations. Once responses were recorded, EBAD followed up with those who answered the survey, asking them if they would consent to being interviewed and recorded for the video. EBAD leader Layla Huber-Verjan (’22) said a lot went into creating the video.

“The interviews took a while to get together. We just had to go around during our free time on campus doing them and reaching out to different students and faculty,” Huber-Verjan said. “I’m the project manager, so I edit all of our news team videos. There was a lot of editing and working with iMovie to get that together.”

The video was presented in the form of a news broadcast and featured numerous members of the Archer community, such as junior Dani Fenster, who talked about her family’s celebration of the Korean New Year. 

Huber-Verjan said she was happy with the way the video turned out and was excited to see community members who participated in the video in the Zoom room.

“We were on Zoom, so all of the mentorships joined on. I actually saw a lot of faculty who don’t have mentorships that we interviewed, so they came on to see themselves in the video and that was really nice,” Huber-Verjan said.

After the video, EBAD posed questions about traditions and holiday celebrations for which the mentorship groups could discuss amongst themselves. 

EBAD member Piper Porter (’24) said EBAD aims to film and create more videos that will allow for both students and faculty to get involved in discussions centered around inclusion and diversity. 

“We plan to make more EBAD news videos for the rest of the year because it’s a nice, fun way to keep people engaged and create conversations and get both teachers and students involved in conversations surrounded around diversity and inclusion at Archer,” Porter said.

Huber-Verjan said it was a special moment hearing students and faculty share their winter holiday celebrations.

“I think it’s important to share awareness of the different cultures that are in the Archer community,” Huber-Verjan said. “We’re always talking about these ‘main’ holidays that are more popular such as Christmas and Hanukkah, so I think it’s important to highlight traditions other people might not be so familiar with.”