As Concord Academy celebrated Multicultural Month this January, the Multiethnic Student Organization (MESO) was busy. Although MESO is an affinity space, the group has hosted many school-wide events beyond the space, such as a Strive Workshop last March, and has also partnered with CA’s dining hall staff to serve dishes recommended by members of MESO.
Currently, Caroline Espinosa ’26 and Daniel Ng ’26 lead the affinity space and strive to make their meetings feel welcoming, especially for those who are uncertain of where they belong. “We’ve tried really hard over the years to emphasize that there’s obviously no one way to be multiethnic,” said Espinosa. “I think MESO is so cool because it’s literally the fact that you have differences within yourself that brings you together. You get this place where, intentionally, you’re bringing together [people] who have different experiences.”
Last year, MESO hosted a Strive Workshop called “Pick a Side: The Struggles of Having to Choose an Identity.” The hope behind this project was to engage with the wider CA community around how it feels to have to choose between different identities. Before the event, Espinosa and Ng had asked participants to fill out an identity wheel where they assigned one of their identities as A and one as B. The workshop opened with a series of would-you-rather questions. At first, the questions were easy. Participants were asked to choose between cats and dogs, and between sweet and salty food. As the workshop went on, the questions got harder. Eventually, participants were asked to choose between their identities: A and B. “We wanted people to understand a little bit of what that choice feels like on a daily, or however often, basis,” Espinosa shared.
Celebrating Multicultural Month last month, MESO worked with the dining hall staff for the second year in a row to bring new recipes from all over the world into the StuFac. Co-heads Espinosa and Ng asked their members for recommendations about what types of food they would like to see in the StuFac, and later discussed the options with dining hall staff to make sure it was feasible to make them for the entire CA community. Some of the food featured throughout January included samosas, a ramen bar, pad see ew, and barbacoa tacos.
“When I went to MESO as a freshman, all of the sudden, I [realized] I can just be here, I don’t have to tilt a little one way or the other. I think hopefully that’s what all affinity spaces feel like, but MESO was that for me,” Espinosa explained. Looking forward, she wants MESO to be a space where people do not question if they belong and do not feel that they have to choose between identities.