International Peace Day is Sept. 22, and Elizabethtown College held a virtual celebration for it on Sept. 21, 2020, Interim Director of Global Understanding and Peacemaking and associate professor of education Dr. Shannon Haley-Mize explained via Zoom that this is the first virtual celebration, but the College has done International Peace Day celebrations for over a decade.
In past years, music therapy students would sing outside of the Baugher Student Center (BSC). Students this year were already working on compiling a video and Haley-Mize “suggested doing a live virtual event, and the students put together 30 minutes of a beautiful video of singing, poetry, and messages of peace.”
For Haley-Mize, it was important to have student voices in the celebration and a lot of students had sent videos explaining their definitions of peace. The event included a section where the students sang a portion of a song in various languages such as Spanish, German, Italian, French and several others.
Similarly, professor of music therapy Dr. Gene Ann Behrens said via Zoom, “People’s voice through music helps bring people together and unite for a cause. [The celebration] encourage[s] students to think about their path in peace and their role in solutions for current problems.”
“Music is really important in people’s lives, especially getting through this [pandemic],” said junior Julie Nitowski said.
It worked out well having the International Peace Day Celebration virtual this year. Dr. Behrens said, “This was the first year CGUP [Center for Global Understanding and Peacemaking] reached out to us, which was a good thing for us to connect with other groups on campus. In years to come I hope more will be involved.”
Along with Haley-Mize and Behrens, two students helped organize the virtual event, Nitowski and senior Emily Sulivan. Over Zoom, Sulivan explained she was glad to have this opportunity and “having an excuse to reach out to people in [Alpha Mu]. It was nice getting back into things after being apart so long and getting to know the first-years. It really brought the group back together again.”
Nitowski cherished the experience and said it was helpful to see the work that goes into it as she learns her role to take over the club when Sulivan graduates this year. “Plus [the celebration] was something the whole campus could enjoy.”
Sulivan explained there was a lot of behind the scenes work, “We even started before classes started around mid-August.” She had to send a lot of emails and keep track of everything using a spreadsheet.
Behrens added “There was the challenge of flexibility, what we thought was going to happen, but then changing the script and putting the small clips in order for the finished video. All of our challenges though in preparation brought out more creativity and meaning for us.”
