Leslie Hunter speaks to the crowd about unity during Martin Luther King festivities on Tuesday. Hunter is youth director and assisting minister of Holy Family Lutheran Church in Chicago. Photo by Brittany Feagans
JOSH MONIZ STAFF WRITER
Wartburg’s week-long celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. came to an end last Thursday. The event was organized and led by the Black Student Union and Students for Peace and Justice.
The celebration kicked off on January 19 with an evening movie showing of “The Great Debaters.”
The next day, MLK day, began with a diversity dialogue and then a chapel service focused on Dr. King.
Later that day, over 100 students participated in the Volunteer Action Center service projects.
The students divided up among eight community and two school projects that had objectives ranging from making fleece blankets to donate to Cedar Valley Friends of the Family shelter to shoveling sidewalks.
Renee Sedlacek, the advisor for VAC, said the VAC hopes to have another service project on Feb. 24 in honor of Aaron Eilerts, a boy scout who was killed in last year’s tornado.
On Tuesday, as Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th president, the celebration continued with Leslie Hunter visiting Wartburg as a speaker.
Hunter is the youth director and assisting minister of Holy Family Lutheran Church in Chicago. He also is the chaplain of at Holy Family Lutheran School and runs a boys’ club named Boys in the Hood in north Chicago.
“He used to come to my high school,” Terence Swims said. “I think he did an amazing job of communicating his message of unity, sticking together and just the whole theme we were trying to put along with Martin Luther King week,”
Swims is a Wartburg student, the president of Black Student Union and one of the head organizers of the celebration.
Wartburg student Ngaire Honey agreed with Swims.
“He got the audience involved. You could tell the audience was really into what he was doing and saying,” Honey said.
In the evening the following day, an inter-faith dialogue was held in Chapel Commons. The event was a round table discussion led by Jen Wendland, president of Students for Peace and Justice and also one of the celebration’s planners.
“People got a chance to see different views in an open, safe environment. I think we should have more events like this one. They should not be limited to just MLK weeks,” Wendland said.
The celebration concluded Thursday with a party in the Heritage and St. Elizabeth ballrooms at 7 p.m. Several students performed music.
Planning for MLK Jr. Day started in November.
“I think everything turned out great and the success rate was good,” Swims said.