Le Festival Des Couleurs a success

Le Festival Des Couleurs celebrates international students

Maria Ly
Staff Writer

The International Student Association kicked off December with their gala, Le Festival Des Couleurs, this past Saturday, Dec. 1 celebrating and connecting domestic and international students. 

The event was sponsored by Students United and had representatives who spoke a little about the program and expressed gratitude towards the students. The Assistant Director of the Kearney Center for International Student Services, Stephanie Gonzalez, also gave her thanks as she surprised the international students attending the event two free cultural contribution hours. 

Tomi Adeola, the MC for the night, introduced the ISA royalty to the stage. Candidates included: Amanallah Zemzemi representing Tunisia, Luke Chinyama representing Zambia, Aysha Siddika Mysha representing Bangladesh, Khaled Souleymane representing Ivory Coast, Anastasia Antonova representing Ukraine, and Eniola Quadri representing Nigeria. 

Avishek Pradhan, the president of the ISA, hopes this event further connects international and domestic students. “This is an important program for us because it helps to encourage all students to see different cultures and dress through these performances,” he said, “International students are not having these kind of events, so this is our first attempt of having an event like this for the international students.”

The ISA royalty was then asked a series of questions to gauge their worthiness of ISA king and queen. Questions such as how they could use their degrees to help their country, questions about climate change, the most pressing challenge their country faces and how they’d solve the problem, etc. 

After the ISA royalty introduction and Q&A, more performances followed suit as the audience ate their dinner of spinach pastries, eggrolls, chicken wings, shrimp and mozzarella skewers, cheesecake, and punch. 

ISA royalty was put to the test once again as they performed their own special talents. Mysha did a stand-up comedy act with jokes ranging from dental jokes to NSFW jokes. Chinyama performed a cultural dance as well as Quadri. Zemzemi performed a rap song from his home country of Tunisia.

Antonova performed a contemporary ballet dance complete with high kicks, splits, and jumps. Souleymane performed a hilarious dancing act to Ciara’s “Level up” in a green wig, silver mask, and makeshift towel-skirt before ripping it all off and performing a crazy dance performance which included standing on his head. 

The event also gave out awards such as the best dressed, the best Recognized Student Organization of the semester, the best RSO president, and the best ISA member. 

Before announcing the ISA king and queen, a video recap was shown on the big screen with pictures celebrating the great year the ISA has had. 

With much anticipation, the ISA king and queen was crowned to Khaled Souleymane and Eniola Quadri. Quadri stated, “I’m so excited, I wasn’t expecting to win. I worked with the other students for this performance, and I wasn’t expecting they were going to ask me questions, especially controversial questions, so it was like on the top of my head. And my performance, I was just freestyling. It was just the vibe. That was why I was very surprised to win, but also excited.”

Feature photo by Nidia Sepulveda | MSU Reporter.