On April 10 at 5 p.m., members of the Asian Multicultural Council (AMC) set up tables on Umrath Lawn to celebrate Asian and Pacific American Heritage Month. The group planned a variety of activities, from Tae Kwon Do to Chinese calligraphy, all showcasing certain aspects of different Asian cultures. 

“A few years ago, AMC used to do Pan-Asia Month every April with a series of programming highlighting different Asian cultures that has kind of died out over the years, in part because of COVID,” AMC co-president, junior Sonal Churiwal, said. “So this year, we’re bringing that back with a month full of programming in April in honor of APIDA heritage month.” 

Food trucks were brought to the event in collaboration with WashU Dining. Seoul Taco, Sando Shack, and Wok-O Taco all parked in front of Umrath Lawn. The first 150 people to arrive at the event received a free meal at the truck of their choice. To attract students, AMC organized a system with an asynchronous queue, allowing people to wait in line for food while checking out the activities at different tables. 

“With a lot of similar-styled events, there’s an intention of requiring a certain number of activities in order to get food. So here we’re kind of reversing the model and really hoping to upgrade our event and activity quality so that these activities are engaging enough that people will want to participate,” former AMC president Shawn Zhu said. 

Once the food trucks opened, students flooded Umrath Lawn, instantly waiting in line and complicating the queue system. AMC members tried to organize the rapidly-expanding line but found it challenging to get students to follow their original plan. 

Despite the overwhelming crowd and chaos of the food truck line, students still enjoyed the culturally-immersive activities on the lawn, even as dark clouds rolled in and sporadically rained on the event. 

“We’re very grateful to be able to collaborate with the Center for Diversity [and] Inclusion, Dining Services, ResLife to put this all together,” Churiwal said.