Students gathered in the Grand Ballroom of the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union Saturday night for the Latino Heritage Celebration Banquet.

Isabel Castro, Latino Heritage chair, organized the event with help from the Heritage committee and close to ten faculty members. The night featured a cocktail hour, dinner, a speaker and dancing.

This year the event attracted about 165 students and members of the administration.

In light of the tragedies of this past week, people wanted to come together and still continue with the celebration.

“The unity this represents is just a remark back to the events of this week that we still have to keep this unity,” Castro said. “We still have to embrace these cultures because the more we embrace different cultures, the less likely these situations will happen.”

This year’s speaker was Lisa Terry-Avios, a writer for Hispanic magazine.

Her speech, which covered Latino-American’s embracing both their Latino heritage and American ethnicity, not hiding from one or the other and what Latino culture has provided, related to everyone. Terry-Avios discussed ten steps dealing with ignorance in grade school, high school and college.

Rhonni Chinn said, “I came here to see what this was about and learn something about another culture, but I really think the ten steps she talked about in her speech could apply to everyone.”

Chicken from Puerto Rico, Ecuadorian vegetables and cake from Columbia were just some of the ethnic foods served at the dinner.

Senior Jennifer Rodriguez has attended this event every year.

“For me, the food was wonderful,” she said. “We are all used to the fast food on campus, and food like this is more like what I eat at home. And for people who aren’t used to eating this food, they get to try something new.”

The night was topped off with dancing by all to a variety of Hispanic music.