UMD student groups put on first Unity Week

Tariq Toure, Faiza Ali, Khadija Mohamed, Mohammed Tall, Shahrazad Hired and Sadiyah Bashir spoke on the “Being Black and Muslim” panel during Unity Week. Photo courtesy of Jude Paul Matias Dizon.

Last semester, the Muslim Student Association sponsored a change.org petition asking Student Entertainment Events to cancel its scheduled screening of American Sniper, claiming the film “dehumanizes Muslim individuals.”

People quickly started lashing out at the group on social media and posting “really nasty things on our MSA Facebook page,” said Hareesa Mohammed, MSA secretary. 

As a way to move forward, the MSA spearheaded the University of Maryland’s first Unity Week, which began Nov. 15 and featured seven days of events focused on social injustices. 

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“We just wanted a way to bring the campus together, to open our eyes to what we are facing each day and to put our feet in someone else’s shoes,” said Mohammed, a senior civil engineering major. “To show appreciation for the fact that we are on a campus that allows us to exercise our freedom of speech.”

The purpose of the week was to promote awareness of Islamophobia, the Black Lives Matter movement and other voices that are not heard, MSA Vice President Luthfe Siddique said.

Students for Justice in Palestine, this university’s chapter of the NAACP, the Student Labor Action Project, the Asian American Student Union, the Office of Multicultural Involvement and Community Advocacy, and Political Latinxs United for Movement and Action in Society also participated in Unity Week. These groups together encompass the Social Justice Coalition, Mohammed said.

“The whole idea between each event was to express solidarity among the different organizations,” said Siddique, a senior civil engineering major. “Whatever those student groups catered to, whatever their mission was, they created events related to that and expressed solidarity for the other groups.”

Events included a Multicultural Involvement & Community Advocacy-sponsored panel about “Being Black and Muslim” and a SLAP event called “Thanking Our Workers,” in which participants wrote letters to people who work on the campus and don’t usually receive appreciation, Mohammed said.

On Tuesday, the NAACP chapter hosted “Connecting the Dots,” which addressed racism on college campuses, including recent events at the University of Missouri. The event discussed how “we can address inclusiveness and diversity on campus and how to become a more unified campus,” Mohammed said.

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The conversation needs extend beyond one week, Siddique said.

“From the events that I went to, I could see that it was a composition of members already involved in that organization and I could definitely see a wide range of students that were attending were seeing stuff for the first time,” Siddique said. “It was sign for me that it got the message across that there are injustices happening and these are things we need to be vocal about.”

The week showcased that “we are stronger unified than we are divided,” Mohammed said. “It definitely came a trying time, so I hope that people learn to support each other in terms what happens in beyond our means.”

Efforts like these, in which different student groups come together, are needed to combat injustices, Siddique said.

“It was motivating; it was unifying; it was enlightening,” said Nasreen Baten-Tschan, a junior community health and economics major and a community organizing intern for MICA. “Like other people said, it’s only the beginning.”