Hundreds welcome Year of the Rat at YSU

YOUNGSTOWN — In a celebration of cultural variety, some 360 people gathered Sunday evening at Youngstown State University for a dinner and entertainment program to mark the Chinese New Year.

“It’s part of our thrust around diversity. The global economy requires that we provide our students with exposure to a wide range of cultures and languages and races and religions,” said Dr. David Sweet, YSU president.

“We’ve been fortunate to recruit on our faculty a number of excellent faculty with Chinese backgrounds. They have been very interested and supportive of celebrations of this type,” Dr. Sweet said.

“Diversity is one of the strengths of this community....It also enriches us as residents here because it allows us to understand and appreciate the much larger world - the cultures that many of us might not be exposed to had we not had the opportunity to interact with those that are drawn here because of YSU,” said Mayor Jay Williams.

“YSU values diversity. YSU embraces the cultural differences,’’ said Dr. Ou Hu, president of the Chinese Association of the Greater Youngstown Area, which sponsored the event. Hu, who was born in China, is also an assistant professor of economics at YSU, which co-sponsored the Chinese New Year celebration.

Hu said he hopes those who attended Sunday’s event “will become more appreciative of Chinese cultures, and I hope all of us can become more open-minded to diversity - to differences among us. All of us on the earth - we’re all equal, but definitely we’re not the same.”

The Year of the Rat, which begins the 12-year cycle of years named for animals in the Chinese lunar calendar, officially begins Thursday. The dinner, a traditional Chinese New Year’s eve feast, featured a generous buffet that included fish, dumplings, shrimp lo mein, beef and Chinese greens. Fish is obligatory for the Chinese New Year event because it signifies abundance, Hu explained