BSU serves soul food at annual fund-raiser

Thanksgiving dinner is coming to IU one week early. \nThe Black Student Union will be serving ham, turkey, chicken, greens and macaroni and cheese at its annual Soul Food Dinner at 6 p.m. tonight in the Forest Greenleaf Dining Room. The event is open to the public and costs $2 with a canned food donation and $3 without.\n"The best reason (to attend) is because it's great soul food that's difficult to get in Bloomington unless you have parents here," said Eric Love, diversity educator and BSU adviser.\nCourtney Williams, president of the BSU encouraged students to experience the tradition of soul food.\n"Soul food is traditional African-American diet," Williams said. "And for anyone who's never tried southern soul food, I've never known anyone who doesn't like it."\nLove said the dinner provides an excellent chance to meet the members of the BSU, as it will be served by BSU volunteers.\n"Since it's an annual event, it's been a long-standing tradition, so I would come out and support it," he said. "This is one of the events where your support is really self-serving because you get to eat some great food."\nBSU already has enough funding from various sources to cover the expenses of the food and a chef so all revenue from the event will be donated. Canned goods will be given to Bloomington's Community Kitchen. \n"We chose the community kitchen because it's something local that we can help right here in our community," Love said.\nWhile the canned goods donation is also available as a way to help locally during the holiday season, all the money will be given to the United African Alliance Community Center in Tanzania. \n"(Recipients of past years) have always been somewhere in Bloomington, so this is our first year to branch out across the ocean to our brothers and sisters in Africa," Williams said.\nIn an effort to raise more money for the organization as well as to unite the African-American community, the African Student Association proposed a competition among itself, the National Pan-Hellenic Council and BSU to see which group can raise the most money for the center by the end of the year. But the Soul Food Dinner has even more black campus organizations helping the cause, including several greek houses.\n"We're going to have a lot of black organizations work together," Williams said. "It's always good for our community to see our black community working together in a united front because you don't always see that"