Late in the evening of a cold Sunday, music could be heard from the Legacy Multipurpose Room with people gathered together to listen to soulful music to eat some great food and to win some prizes. All as part of Feed The Soul.

“With Feed The Soul we try to incorporate food, music, and the culture, so we came up with a title, something that could kind of get all of that, and that is why we went with feed the soul,” Norma Ramirez, Assistant Director of Residence Life, said.

Having a blast at Feed The Soul! Shout out to Hazel and Suga B catering for being a part of our program tonight in the Legacy Multipurpose Room! @msutexas #BlackHistoryMonth pic.twitter.com/dWSVcdpwGg

— MSUTexasHousing (@MWSUHousing) February 18, 2019

Ramirez then went into what each part of the title meant explaining that feed means the literal term of feeding people. She explained soul as any part it could be the music or the history surrounding Black History Month.

“We did feed as in literal term, we did soul could be any of those it could be music or any of the history so that’s how we got to the name of it through those elements,” Ramirez said at the event sponsored by Residence Life and Housing.

She first came up with this idea for Feed the Soul while helping serve on the Black History Month committee and knew to work in resident life the students would need an incentive to come out to events.

“I helped serve on the Black History Month committee and everybody has different ideas and so for me working in [residence] life I know that residents have to have an incentive to come, so for most times if you provide food [students] like ‘yeah maybe I will go to that’,” Ramirez said.

For her, though she always thought that there was something missing from this equation. She sees music to be a way to almost fill that equation.

“I have always thought it had to be more than [food], and so we always try to have some kind of music component this year. We were super lucky to get Hazel to come. She’s a different kind of style,” Ramirez said.

The final piece she thought would make this equation whole is for students to win prizes and to interact in some way to the theme of the event.

“I thought when you go to an event sometimes you get prizes and food, but do you really learn anything and that’s where the slide show came in and the cards on each table. That’s how I came to the idea and I wanted it to be different than all the other events also going on in Black History Month because we do not like to compete against each other, but we want to provide lots of opportunities for students to experience and learn,”Ramirez said.

Bringing 57 students to this soul filled night, one of these was Casey Albriks, a biology and chemistry sophomore, who was there to support his fellow resident life staff.
“Housing is putting [Feed the Soul] on and I like to support my staff and my department” Albriks said.

He said he believes that if people go out to more events than the community and culture of the university will improve.

“I think the more that people come out to events the more people embrace the culture of MSU the better the community of MSU as a whole,” Albriks said.

Many different kinds of people came out to this event, including Lindsey Sarabia an education junior who was filled with facts about Black History Month.

“I like Black History Month a lot of people say they don’t like how it is the shortest month, but it is actually Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass birthday to celebrate those two men they decided to do it on this month so I like at this school we have a big emphasis on it,” Sarabia said.