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Open mic night – Valentine’s edition
The Multicultural Psychological Student Association put on an open mic night at Brooklyn Pizza at UCF on Tuesday night to raise money and nonperishable items for a relief fund in Haiti. There were around 11 acts and some raffle prizes.
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The Night
The MPSA UCF chapter put together an open mic night in order to raise money and collect canned goods to send to Haiti. There were many various acts that ranged from singing, playing guitar, poetry and spoken word. The cost was $2 to get in.
“Essentially it was just supposed to be an open mic night, but we turned it into a Haiti relief type thing and we normally wouldn’t charge at the door but we’re going to donate half of our proceedings to the Haiti relief and hopefully help out,” said Cely Gonzalez, treasurer of MPSA at UCF. “We’re actually collecting canned goods and stuff like that so we can also donate”.
The night was full of many different types of performances. Because of the fact that it was a Valentine’s Day edition, many of the acts recited poems and sung about love, hope, and happiness.
One of the spoken word acts who called himself 13th Disciple gave a compelling epilogue of his past experiences and urged the audience to go speak with him if they were interested in changing their lives for the better.
Between the performances the MPSA gave away some raffle prizes. The prizes consisted of gift cards from Yogurtopia, Olive Garden, and Ale House.
Gonzales says they plan on continuing the awareness of Haiti relief by maintaining the collection of donations with every other event the MPSA puts together.
“We don’t think that just because this is the first month that we should donate and then forget about it”
The Performances
It started with a few poetry readings by performers named th3 Vulture, truth spoken 1st, and Arturro. All of which were about love, hence the Valentine’s day theme. Another poet named Shanequa Bernard read a poem which she titled “Love”.
There were a few musical acts among the poetic performances. Brandon Brooks sung and played his acoustic guitar. Following him was Jay Chia. He performed two songs in which he prerecorded because the song consisted of different layers that he was unable to perform live.
“My favorite performance was the kid playing guitar because he made it welcoming to everyone,” said audience member Jon Georgens. “He didn’t overdue his performance or try and push his beliefs on a very diverse group.”
The spoken word artists were the final performers.
About MPSA
According to the MPSA Facebook page, the primary mission of the Multicultural Psychological Student Association shall be to effectively serve and retain multicultural students studying psychology (and in related areas) at the University of Central Florida by holistically enhancing their academic experience through the following systems of support…
The Facebook group page goes on to explain four ways in which they enhance students’ academic experience; informational, academic, social/interpersonal, and community service.
Additional Content Suggestion
If I were to add additional content to this story I would put together a slideshow made with Soundslides that includes audio and photographs from the performances of the night.
