From April 12 through April 17, members of Student Senate are hosting From Every Nation (FEN) week — a week filled with speaker events, workshops and opportunities for togetherness — to educate members of Calvin’s community on Calvin’s From Every Nation (FEN) document.
The FEN document — which can be accessed on Calvin’s website — has three themes. The first is multicultural citizenship, which emphasizes expanding cross-cultural experiences and cultivating intercultural sensitivities. The second theme is anti-racism and accountability, which emphasizes identifying the sin of racism and promoting accountability through structural changes to avoid institutional racism. The third theme is reconciliation and restoration, which aims to develop a positive vision of shalom in our community. The FEN document was first created in 1985 but was revised in 2004, according to the Calvin website.
Grace Langeland, team leader of Team Fresh on Senate, initially came up with the idea of having a FEN Week. She believes that the FEN document is “a document that should be living on this campus, but it isn’t something [students] tend to see.” Langeland was inspired by Unlearn Week in the fall to create FEN Week in the spring, and emphasized that we need to “keep on learning together and keep on celebrating together to try to facilitate this little snippet of shalom”—a shalom that looks like all communities from all around the world coming together.
Langeland shared with Chimes that FEN Week will host a variety of workshops, speakers and panels, and will also be featured thematically at chapel services and Living Our Faith Together (LOFT). Events involving speakers and panels will all take place in Commons Square in Hekman Library.
On April 12, FEN Week kicked off with Worship From Around the World at the Meeter Center Lecture Hall. On April 13, chapel will feature the Gospel Choir, there will be a FEN Week Kick-off Table on Commons Lawn and a FEN Panel will be hosted.
Other events will be featured throughout FEN Week, including a Myth Busters Workshop centered around debunking immigration myths, Art Displays on the third floor of the library, a CRC FEN Panel discussing why FEN matters from a CRC perspective and a Historical Immigration Policy Talk, among other events. FEN Week will end with the World Food Fest hosted by the International Student Association Committee (ISAC).
The full FEN Week schedule can be found on Student Senate’s website..
According to Langeland, the current political climate of the world makes FEN Week all the more important. She stated, “[Our world] is not fostering the feeling of belonging and of welcoming for everybody.” Langeland referenced Revelation 7:9, which reads, “After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb” (NIV). Langeland emphasized that when we consider who our neighbor is, we consider everybody, whether they’re “right next door or across the world,” truly embodying being from every nation and tribe. At the moment, the world isn’t reflecting that, Langeland said.
“We want [FEN Week] to be both a learning opportunity and promoting the From Every Nation document on our campus, but also a celebration of the diversity that we have and the people that are here, the neighbors that make up our community as Calvin,” Langeland told Chimes.
Other students feel similar to Langeland. Meg Pheifer, Student Senate Vice President of Operations, said many students don’t know what the FEN Document is, despite its importance, as “it’s a big part of who we are at Calvin, that we do value diversity and multiculturalism on our campus.” She emphasized that in a time when it feels like there’s nothing that can be done in the face of so much hate in the world, especially around immigrants, “all we can do is to learn and educate ourselves.” For that reason, she views the speaker sessions during FEN Week as an especially valuable and insightful source.
Pheifer spoke on how FEN Week will be helpful to educate students on what is going on in the world by prompting students to ask themselves, “What can we, as college students, do to respond to it? … How can we be a place that is truly multicultural and not just a dominant culture that assimilates other cultures into it?” Pheifer believes there is a lack of curiosity to learn about other people in our society, and that FEN Week is meant to combat that.
Alyssa Pokharel, President of Student Senate, believes that FEN Week needs to foster dialogue across campus. The FEN document states its values of multiculturalism, anti-racism and reconciliation, and Pokharel urges students to “be really intentional as a community to hold fast to these values.” She emphasized that a spiritually mature faith involves intercultural competence and “the ability to exist in spaces where people are different than you.”
To Pokharel, that also means creating dialogue around the tensions surrounding the current political climate. Pokharel told Chimes, “We’re not supposed to stay comfortable and complacent in this community. If we are, then we might be doing something wrong, so part of FEN Week is to bring to the forefront our need to lament and our need to recognize where we’ve fallen short,” which can be done through mature conversations.
Josh Samarco, director of the Center for Intercultural Student Development (CISD), views FEN Week as a space to “slow down, look beyond ourselves and engage” with the realities of a time that is “being shaped by global conflict, racism, political division and real harm … by which many students are directly impacted by through their identities, families, backgrounds and lived experiences.”
Samarco believes FEN Week matters because it is a reminder that faith and justice are connected, and that “our faith isn’t separate from what’s happening in the world.” He told Chimes that the FEN document is a core Calvin document because “it says this work isn’t optional or extra. This work aligns with who we say we are as a Christian university.” The FEN document and FEN Week push the Calvin community to think seriously about justice, belonging and what loving our neighbors well truly means.
Samarco said that FEN Week will “continue to show what’s possible when a campus community comes together, shares its voices and stories, and leans in with courage and care.”
FEN Week will conclude with the World Food Fest hosted by ISAC, which will take place on Friday, April 17, from 4:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Sunny Lim, co-president of ISAC alongside Esther Idowu, invites the public to come enjoy “authentic, diverse food all in one place.”
At the World Food Fest, students can purchase a $3 ticket, which is then good for one dish. Attendees can purchase as many tickets as they would like, and all proceeds will be used to reimburse involved student organizations for the cost of ingredients, with any remaining proceeds going towards supporting ISAC events next year. The food fest will feature dishes from Asia, Africa and the Americas.
Langeland encourages students to show up, whether to speaker events, workshops or the food festival. Langeland stated, “We love our neighbors from all across the world, and we’re all here to worship God together.” FEN Week is a time for that worship through community and education, working to build multicultural citizenship, anti-racism and accountability, and reconciliation and restoration.
