Culture Day is a longstanding tradition that’s highly significant to many students at South. Culture Day, as the name states, is a celebration of South’s cultural diversity and collective heritage. An abundance of students and staff around South look forward to this day as it’s an opportunity to showcase and share the beautiful and diverse cultures that South houses. Souths Culture Day took place this year as a part of spirit week. 

During Culture Day, students come to school wearing items from their respective cultures, showing them off to students and staff around the school. “Culture day is a day where I can represent my people along with seeing and learning about different cultures. This is important because it symbolizes peace and harmony between people with different backgrounds,” sophomore Nasteho Abdi explains. “Culture Day is definitely my favorite event that happens at South because of how beautiful it is. It’s so important that we create a space where students are comfortable showing aspects from their cultures and that’s exactly what culture day is all about,” junior Kyla Loren added.

Although this is a tradition that is important to many students, Culture Day hasn’t happened in over two years due to fears of cultural appropriation. Cultural appropriation is the inappropriate taking of certain aspects of different cultures without understanding or respecting them. With growing concerns from student leaders and administrators that this would happen, culture day was continuously pushed back. “I was pretty concerned when it was getting to the end of the school year and culture day had not occurred yet. I understand why they pushed back Culture Day, but I feel like their scenario was very unlikely to happen,” Loren states. “It sucks to have Culture Day being pushed back but I understood. I was just excited to dress up and educate others about Somali culture,” Abdi added.

Though students lost hope of Culture Day happening, on May 3rd South announced that culture day would be happening as a part of prom spirit week, instead being called “Dress to Express,” garnering excitement from students around the school. 

Culture day was a huge success, many students participated and showed up in a variety of different clothes that showcased their heritage. “Culture Day was really fun for me. My friends and I dressed up and took pictures with one another,” Abdi said. “This year’s culture day was really successful. I saw a lot of people wearing clothes from their cultures and I felt like it showed unity between different cultures at South,” junior Faisa Abdo stated. 

Culture Day is an extremely significant tradition because it promotes cultural appreciation, global awareness, inclusivity, heritage preservation, and provides a form of academic enrichment for students. Year-round, students and faculty look forward to a culture day occurring. It’s absolutely a tradition that we should upkeep.