Every year before Thanksgiving break, the Upper School Students of Color Association (SOCA) hosts an event where all Upper School students of color can enjoy talking with friends, meeting new people, and, of course, eating delicious food. Friendsgiving is an event where SOCA members come together as a community and celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday. Members bring food, either homemade or store bought, to share with all attendees. This is an important event for members of SOCA. As SOCA faculty advisors, Upper School Coordinator Rolanda Shepard, College Counseling Coordinator Alexis Pantoja, and PE Teacher Terry Davis contributed towards the event. Shepard said that the reason why Friendsgiving is so important is to spend time with one another as a community and be grateful.
“It’s easygoing,” Shepard said, “and hopefully that just makes people who maybe not feel comfortable coming to the meetings or coming to other events, feel comfortable enough to just show up.” She believes that SOCA should hold this event every year. “It gives you an opportunity to share yourself with other folks that appreciate it,” Shepard said.
To plan Friendsgiving, she and the other SOCA heads reserved the area, moved the furniture s, and warmed up the food. Shepard said it was all worth it for an event like this. Along with area reservations and warming up food, Ms. Pantoja and the rest of the SOCA heads decorated the area, sent out invitations and hung them around the school, met with students, and met with faculty advisors to plan for this event.
Pantoja believes Friendsgiving is just as important as the rest of the SOCA heads do. “I believe the importance is to have a space for unity to happen, for friendships to be created.” Pantoja said. She shares the belief that SOCA should hold Friendsgiving every year. “Being a student of color in a predominantly white institution doesn’t give a lot of space for or it has a hard time giving space for students of color here to connect.” Though this event was special for the majority of SOCA members, some members decided not to go. Senior Gabriel Vilus is one of the members who decided not to attend. He said that he didn’t feel connected enough to members inside the school to go to a Friendsgiving hosted by the school. Another reason he didn’t attend is because he had another Friendsgiving to attend.
“It was a lot to go to two Friendsgiving events,” Vilus said, “especially with working outside of school as well.” Even though he didn’t join in on Friendsgiving this year, he loves to attend other SOCA events like meetings and field trips. This is where he mainly connects with the other members of SOCA.
Even though some members didn’t attend, Men of Color Association (MOCHA) and Women of Color Association (WOCA) affinity heads made sure most could attend. WOCA heads, senior Spencer Dunbar and junior Ava Lin, did many things to contribute to Friendsgiving and enjoyed the event. Dunbar and Lin both mentioned they advertised and helped set up for the event. “I helped make sure we had the best music for the event,” Dunbar said.
Both WOCA heads agreed that Friendsgiving is vital for SOCA members. “I think Friendgiving just really brings all the students of color together,” Ava Lin said.
“Friendsgiving is for everyone to just come together, have food and just build community within each other,” Dunbar said. Dunbar highlighted her favorite part as sitting, talking, and eating with the seniors of color, which brought them all closer together. Lin’s highlights were the good music, good food, talking with others and dancing.
MOCHA head Nathan Pantoja also put in work to make sure Friendsgiving could happen, and he had many favorite parts of the event. “I think the importance of Friendsgiving is to bring people together,” Nathan Pantoja says, “to create a strong community where people can create more of a family.” He says that bringing people together is one of his jobs when planning Friendsgiving.
Nathan Pantoja had to engage people new to Parker for the event, especially the freshmen. “They’re unfamiliar with the emails and unfamiliar with the dates, so communicating with them and the other MOCHA members is very valuable,” Nathan Pantoja said. Along with meeting new freshmen, he also enjoyed talking to people he doesn’t typically talk to outside of SOCA.
Friendsgiving is meaningful to plenty of SOCA members. Many highlights and friendships made during Friendsgiving come from talking to new people, listening to music with everyone, and eating food together. Friendsgiving had a lot of food to bond over like Nathan Pantoja and Alexis Pantoja’s Alcapurria (banana dumplings), Ms. Shepard’s fried chicken, and Ava Lin’s blueberry crumble.
Friendsgiving is a time to share culture and come together not only as a community but as a family.
