On the eve of the first day of classes, students, faculty and professors shuffled from table to table in a room on the first floor of the New University Union. Stick-on name tags were scanned and friendly greetings were exchanged for two hours at the first-ever New Student of Color Networking Event on Tuesday night.

Nearly 100 students and faculty of color gathered to continue building the multicultural community on campus and discuss specific challenges students of color face.

Both new and returning students attended the networking session, the first event in the Intercultural Welcome Kick-Off Series. The series is a result of collaboration between 11 organizations across campus, including the Multicultural Resource Center, Student Association (SA), Faculty and Staff of Color Association and Intercultural Welcome Committee.

The networking event followed a “speed-dating” framework, allowing students to ask questions to a variety of people and start building support systems that can help them navigate their college careers.

According to Tanyah Barnes, interim assistant director of the Multicultural Resource Center, the first six weeks of freshman year are critically important to students’ retention and success. Barnes said that Welcome Week events, like this one, are important in providing a sense of comfort to new students of color within the predominantly white University. The more students are able to build their community, the more likely they are to stay.

The idea for the networking event first came up in March, according to Jazell Johnson, divisional diversity officer of student affairs at BU and a member of the Intercultural Welcome Committee. After she had successfully planned a networking event for female students and faculty at the University, she saw the need for a similar event aimed toward students and faculty of color.

“You’re always going to be more productive when you have support,” Johnson said.

Jeannie Alonzo, a sophomore majoring in integrative neuroscience and an intern at the Multicultural Resource Center, said that by getting involved, he found his community of students of color at BU.

“As a freshman, when I came in, I didn’t see a lot of students of color and I think it’s important that a lot of students see that there are students of color on campus,” Alonzo said. “I wanted to show that there is a presence.”

SA President Jermel McClure, Jr., a senior majoring in political science, helped plan the event last semester while serving as the SA vice president for multicultural affairs. He said that the event is one step toward ensuring that the University is a space of safety and inclusion for students of color.

“This sort of forces interaction, allows us to build community and build strong relationships so that it’s harder for racial tension to really be a problem for us,” McClure said.

Faculty members and returning students also spoke to the crowd as a whole, providing insight on the importance of students of color having an active, present community at BU. Valerie Hampton, chief diversity officer at the BU Division of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, said that change will only happen when the entire campus community ― not just students and faculty of color ― are interested and engaged in making the University a safe place for all people.

“It’s not just us,” Hampton said. “It is all of us, and it is all of the larger campus. It takes effort. This is one of those efforts.”

The series will continue with This is ME: Binghamton’s Multicultural Extravaganza, which will showcase the many multicultural organization and feature journalist Kimberly Foster, on Friday at 6 p.m. in the Anderson Center’s Osterhout Concert Theater. It will conclude with the Multicultural Family Reunion during Family Weekend in September.