From April 14 to April 17, NYUAD hosted its fifth Hackathon for Social Good in the Arab World. The event brought together 93 participants from over fifteen countries, including Pakistan, Germany, Algeria and the United States. A total of 26 mentors were flown in, coming from world-famous tech companies such as Google, Microsoft and Twitter, as well as from companies based in the Arab world like Wamda. During her opening speech, Clinical Professor of Computer Science at NYUAD Sana Odeh highlighted a 47:53% female-to-male participation ratio in the event. Teams will present their ideas on April 17 at 5:30 p.m. and the winners will be announced at 7:30 p.m.

Inspired by the increasing focus on diversity at NYU New York, the NYU Abu Dhabi Student Government established a Diversity Committee. The committee’s mission is to work on proposing policies and strategies to achieve a more culturally sensitive community.

“The committee can try to be a space where uninformed questions can be asked so that we can build more understanding of the implications of the differences within our community,” said Chair of the Diversity Committee Miren Aguirre Salazar.

Paradoxically, the committee believes that most members of the NYUAD community are already aware of the layers of nuance to different aspects of people’s identity, such as gender, sexuality and economic background, and therefore sees no pressing need to enhance education in these areas.

Photo by Michelle Loibner

From April 10 to April 16, NYUAD organized the Yalla Go Green Week in collaboration with Ecoherence, a SIG devoted to environmental sustainability. Each day focused on a particular theme, with specific panels and activities to raise awareness about sustainability on campus and beyond. The week started off with Water Day and ended with Recycling Day.

Adjunct Professor of Legal Studies Shakeel Kazmi wrote to The Gazelle regarding his experience in the panel discussions.

“I think our week-long discussions were successful to create awareness about environment and sustainability. We all know that our future will depend on our lifestyle,” said Kazmi. “We must keep in our minds that only governments and laws cannot enforce sustainability. We must take it as an ethical concern for the sake of our future generations.”

He mentioned that experts from King’s College London, Masdar Institute, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Tadweer joined the panel discussions to discuss environment, climate change, water, energy and recycling.

Photo by Carlos Escobar/The Gazelle

On April 15, the Latinoamérica Student Interest Group hosted Latino Night in the Marketplace. According to the event organizers, the aim of Latino Night is to showcase Latin American culture, customs and values through activities, performances and food. The SIG tried to show the attendees how Latinos celebrate life, love, death, independence and birthdays. The night ended with capoeira, musical and dance performances.

“[It is] one of the events that gets the whole community involved outside of the SIG's usual members,” said sophomore Alex Matters. “The organizers did an amazing job and it was a lot of fun.”

President of the Latinoamérica SIG, Cristóbal Esteve, shared his experience planning the event with The Gazelle.

“Latino Night is one of the few opportunities [when] Latin American students are able to share their culture with the rest of the university, so we all worked really hard planning and executing this event,” said Esteve.

“It was really rewarding to see everyone who attended have a good time because that was our goal since the first day we started organizing this event,” added Esteve.

On  April 16, the NYUAD Arts Centre organized a musical concert titled Funk: Evolution of a Revolution. The event took place at the East Plaza and was attended by many jazz fans from the Abu Dhabi community. Funk music legends trombonist Fred Wesly, trumpeter Pee Wee Ellis and their world-class band graced the stage for the first time in the UAE. Notably, Ellis and Wesly — who were also members of James Brown’s band — are two of the cornerstones of funk music and highly influential figures within the realms of R&B, soul-jazz and hip hop.

Freshman Anastasiia Zubareva wrote to The Gazelle, “I really like the vibes and the music. I have a lot of work to finish but I decided to do it here. The fact that we get to see such living legends perform in front of us is just amazing!”