Food Fair during Ramadan

By: Nagham Masarweh; Center Spread Editor

Ramadan is a beautiful month celebrated by many Middle Eastern citizens around the world. Consisting of a month of fasting from sunset to sundown, there are 28 days to be clean, self-controlling, mindful, and supposedly to be pure. 

During Ramadan there are, of course, a few downfalls to where it affects lives, including: energy, sleep schedule, dehydration, and other negative effects. I’m not saying that we exist in a poor condition where we feel as if we were being tortured, it’s nowhere near complaning. I’m simply saying that we simply won’t be able to be our full-selves, without water nor any source of necessary proteins and fibers in our bodies during the day. Students are fasting during school which is often even more difficult, especially at brunch or lunch. 

As a person who celebrates Ramadan and has been for most of my life, I can say it doesn’t bother me that much. Perhaps it’s the fact that I’m used to not eating during this time since I have been celebrating it for a while and can handle the difficulties that are set upon. I may get light headed here and there but it’s not too hard.

Now, we have events at school sometimes that involve great amounts of cuisine and cultural meals. We had a food fair recently, packed with food and lines of students with money already in their hands. That wasn’t the case for all students though. Some of us were fasting since the food fair was during the middle of Ramadan. Now one could say “oh it’s okay, they can just skip a day” or “ it’s not that big of a deal, it was just a last minute thing” but some could also say that “I already have to deal with this when we are eating normal lunch, now I have to see this,” or “ why would they plan this when advertising how considerate the school should be of what we are going through and then pulling this, doesn’t it contradict what they stood for”. 

In my opinion, I think the school had no intention of being inconsiderate or planning this on purpose during Ramadan. It was most likely a change of plans or an event that had to happen for the sake of cultural week. Just because a few students may be participating in Ramadan doesn’t mean that events have to be paused or that anything with food has to be banned. If that was the case then they should cancel lunch! There were also other things that students that may have been bothered with that could’ve been done during the food fair to ignore the whole event in general. Our geometry and algebra 1 teacher here at Mills, Mr. Yan is a Muslim as well and held in his room in math hall open for any students that were bothered by the food fair. Leadership dearly apologizes and didnt mean for this to happen, the food fair was a last minute event and just a slip up on their end. 

Ramadan is an amazing cultural اcelebration that is dearly appreciated in the world. I am glad that the school does sympathize and tries to make sense of what we are going through during this time. The school does many things for us to feel like we are being included and that they are being culturally aware, this was just a mishap on their end.