The kick off for Hispanic Heritage Month was scheduled to take place Monday at 3:30 p.m. in front of Talley Student Union, but was canceled due to scheduling conflicts.

Twenty Latin American flags were supposed to have paraded down main campus not only in a symbolic welcome of the commemorative month but also with the purpose of informing spectators about the many cultural events scheduled in the upcoming days.

The flag parade was the brain-child of Nelson Santiago, assistant director of Hispanic Student Affairs, and was meant to bring awareness of the Hispanic community at NC State. Santiago had single-handedly been planning the parade and had to make scheduling decisions that didn’t suit the students who had expressed interest in participating. Although the time and venue seemed fitting to the timeline of the month’s events, it fell at a peak time for classes. Furthermore, without the support of the Latino organizations on campus, the Multicultural Student Affairs office struggled to get attention and participants for the kick-off event.

With only six people in attendance for the flag parade, the event had to be canceled and postponed until further notice.

“All we have to do is assemble, all we have to do is have people get together so we can go around,” Santiago said. “All we need is music, these calendars and the flags.”

Much of the weight of putting together the upcoming events fell on Santiago; our voice in the MSA had been hard at work obtaining the flags and putting together the Hispanic Heritage Month calendar of events. However, it is important to keep in mind that both our assistant director and our Latino Organizations’ executive boards are new on the job and had not had time to plan ahead and work together.

The Bienvenidos staff believes in the importance and impact of our small group on the greater campus community and believes it is important to keep in mind that we are Latinos all the time, not just from Sept. 15 through Oct. 15. Although Hispanic students only make up about 4 percent of the student body, it is important that we put a face to the statistics and begin to have a stronger presence on campus. As higher-education Latino students, it is our responsibility to educate others of our diverse and rich cultures.