Crochet Club members Grace Nariani (left) pictured with Charlotte Barnard (right) at the rose sale.
ANISSA LATIF / COURTESY
Laili Shahrestani, Editor-in-Chief
During Valentine’s week, several clubs all across the Manhattan University (MU) campus celebrated the spirit of love and community by hosting their own Valentine’s Day-themed events. Groups such as the Crochet Club, the Society of Women Engineers (SWE), the MU chapter of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and MU Players were among those who brought people together and spread love this past holiday.
Each of the clubs held its own distinct events, from crochet rose sales to flower bouquet making, laser cutting and even the Players’ annual V-Day performance. While each event differed, all of them shared the same goal of wanting people to fully embrace the spirit of Valentine’s Day, or helped in highlighting important issues going on around the world today.
The Crochet Club’s rose sale consisted of a table filled with crochet roses, both single-stem and mini bouquets. Students and faculty members were able to pre-order their rose(s) or purchase them upon availability during Valentine’s week.
Grace Nariani, a junior and the secretary of the Crochet Club, spoke to The Quadrangle about her experience with the crochet rose sale and how she felt like all her hard work and effort paid off, because she got to see people leave with a smile on their faces.
“I love how excited people were when they were picking up their roses,” Nariani said. “And they were like, ‘my girlfriend’s going to love this, or my boyfriend is going to love this.’ I’m so happy that we could contribute towards someone else’s happiness.”
Nariani explained how the turnout for the event was incredibly successful, and that the Crochet Club ended up selling out all of their roses, demonstrating that students and faculty were nothing short of impressed.
“At first we were going to make 40 roses each… And then we ended up making 50 to 60 each,” Nariani said. “We had 40 pre-orders, and then we sold an additional 70 to 80 in person. We sold out by Friday, which was awesome. And it was really successful.”
While a number of people bought these roses for their significant others, Nariani expressed how there were still many who purchased solely for themselves. The concept of “self-love” and doing things for yourself is something that the rose sale also symbolized.
“I think a lot of people can feel lonely on Valentine’s Day… But why not buy something for yourself and make yourself happy?” Nariani said. “Something I love is that a lot of people came over saying they’re going to buy one for themselves.”
On a similar note, Gabriella Morelli, a senior and the president of SWE, explained how her club’s flower bouquet-making event had a similar purpose – to showcase that people are allowed to get themselves flowers and treat themselves without having to wait around for a significant other. Morelli also emphasized the importance of self-love and how her event helped promote that.
“It’s just a chance to show up for yourself and be with your friends, so you don’t have to wait for someone else to get you something,” Morelli said. “…We just wanted to make a way to explain that you can get yourself flowers, so you can celebrate and do something for yourself.”
In addition to the aspect of self-love, Morelli also spoke about how the event served as a “Galentine’s” party, and that it felt nice to see women helping one another out and spreading the joy of the holiday.
GRACE NARIANI / COURTESY
“I liked seeing all the girls put their creativity towards this, and also just helping each other out,” Morelli said. “Everyone was helping with the paper that you wrap the flowers in, because it can be a little tricky to make a certain shape, so it was nice to see everyone helping each other… We wanted to do a Galentine’s event to celebrate the holiday.”
Also adding to the spirit of love, MU’s AIAA held a laser cutting event, allowing students to take part in using the laser cutter located in the engineering manufacturing lab. The purpose behind this event was for people to be able to design and “make wooden cutouts or engravings for Valentine’s Day,” according to the manhattan.edu website. These designs would be engraved into a keychain, and could then be distributed to loved ones or kept for oneself.
MU Players also held their annual V-Day performance, which was a night composed of a variety of collections from Carolyn Gage’s work.
Gage is the “author of twelve books and more than eighty-eight plays…[as well as] an incest survivor, a woman living with a hidden disability and a lesbian feminist…,” as stated on her own blog. The V-Day performance served as a night to bring awareness to violence against women in the world we live in today, as well as highlight voices such as Gage’s. While the event touched on serious issues and aimed to uplift women, it still held the essence of Valentine’s Day by promoting love and acceptance within society.