Leadership Perspectives

For weeks, I’m sure you have seen many people wearing bright construction cone-orange T-shirts, running around campus with great pride. Collectively, we jokingly called ourselves “the Army of Orange,” with a mission to share our South Asian culture by filling an auditorium with a night of dancing and celebration.

For most of us, Bhangra in the Burgh wasn’t just a large-scale event — it turned into a proud tradition, uniting the campus and putting Carnegie Mellon University on the cultural map, while also allowing us to give to a local charity. We, the Bhangra in the Burgh Executive Committee, would like to thank all of the participating teams, staff, volunteers, and university departments and student organizations that made this event possible. We’d also like to thank the 2300 members of the audience who helped us raise $9500 to donate to our charity, the Homeless Children’s Education Fund of Allegheny County.

During the initial planning phases, the Bhangra in the Burgh Executive Committee agreed on three main goals for this year’s event.

First, we wanted Bhangra in the Burgh to offer opportunities for student involvement as well as Carnegie Mellon involvement in the local community. As such, it became the largest student-run event at Carnegie Mellon. The second goal was to showcase Carnegie Mellon, as a large part of our audience was from peer universities and the Pittsburgh community. We did this by incorporating groups like The Originals, Tanah, Chak De, and Variety Hour as exhibition acts in both the show and the events during the week before the competition. Our final goal was to donate an even larger amount to charity than last year’s $6000 — which we did by $3500.

While everything during the weekend and related to the competition ran smoothly, we’d like to address the one setback we did encounter. We apologize for not being able to promptly seat those who came after the show began. We will take the appropriate measures next year to ensure that all ticket buyers know when doors actually close. While we did escort late-arriving groups into the venue in between performances, we sincerely apologize to those few who could not be accommodated. As a student-run organization in our second year, we are grateful for the overwhelming support from the Carnegie Mellon community and are proud that our efforts have created a widely enjoyed tradition.