OCE and ATSU organize collaborative events for MLK Jr. Day
Truman State University’s Office of Community Enrichment and ATSU hosted four different events in celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. in association with the national holiday. Members of the community are encouraged to attend.
The first event was held the actual holiday, January 19 and was called A Day of Service, where students of both campuses as well as members of the community have the opportunity to sign up and be assigned to one of the ten service sites in the Kirksville community. The OCE Coordinator for three years, Kerrion Dean, was one of the main coordinators for this event.
“It used to be a tradition that ended around 2017 due to staff changes, but we brought it back last year and plan to make it a tradition again.” Dean said
There are also two public speakers planned for this year. Jeff Andrion, associate professor at ATSU-Arizona, will be speaking live from ATSU’s Arizona campus. Students and members of the community can attend his speech in the Mehegan classroom on ATSU campus at 1p.m. on January 20.
The second speaker is Kirksville’s own Ashley Young who is a 2007 Truman alumni and the current Community and Economic Director of the city for the past 12 years. Young has been named the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Statewide Community Service Awardee, so he will be speaking at the MLK dinner at 6 p.m. on January 30 in the SUB Georgian rooms.
“I feel Ashley differed from the previous speakers because he’s not necessarily a part of higher education,” Dean said. “He’s a leader within the Kirksville community and a city official so his lenses are a bit more broad because people within higher education are typically focused on making their students better and ready to go out into the world and their own communities.”
In the K-12 schools, an art and essay contest was held and the winners were invited to the dinner as well as the rest of the community. The dinner is made possible by the MLK Statewide Celebration Commission.
Young says he feels that he has an obligation to give back to his community as he is fortunate enough to be in a position where he can do so, and not just through his job. He says that he cannot imagine not being of service to his community and feels that members of the neighborhood should feel a duty to give back to those in need.
“I want to talk about the importance of engagement and discussion between people who may not see eye to eye or agree on certain subjects,” Young said. “Just the importance of those conversations in helping to create the kind of world Dr. King envisioned. Having these conversations and building those relationships is more important now than ever, since there’s so much division and just outright hate in our public discourse.”
At 6 p.m. on Friday, January 23, there will be the traditional movie showing in the planetarium. This year the movie chosen is ‘Race’ which follows Olympian Track Star Jessie Owens.
