WOODLAND HILLS : Pierce Students Feast at Ethnic Food Festival

What started as a joke between two college friends bloomed into a five-day festival at Pierce College in Woodland Hills this week, wrapping up Friday with dancing, speeches and carne asada .

The “A Taste of the World” festival, which brought together all nine international and ethnic clubs on campus and staff from 26 foreign consulates, was the first of its kind on campus in 15 years.

Throughout the day, aromas from food booths lured backpack-toting students into the Campus Center, where a Jamaican band played. Staff members of the adjacent student health center had to yell at each other to be heard over the pounding music.

Pierce aeronautics student Dilup Talaiver, president of the International Student Club, said he and a friend, Aziz Rahimtoola, hatched the idea last year after a tea party the club organized flopped from lack of interest.

The pair lightheartedly proposed that, next time, they should turn the tea party into “something grand,” said Talaiver, 20. He and Rahimtoola began talking of a throwing weeklong food party on campus, attended by high government, state and international officials.

The pair even sent an invitation to Secretary of State Warren Christopher--and got a semi-favorable reply.

Christopher’s staff wrote back, “saying that he wouldn’t be able to make it, but if it became a yearly event, he might attend. Seriously,” said Talaiver. “That sort of motivated us.”

About 350 of Pierce’s 18,000 students are from other countries.

“The international students don’t always fit in,” said Talaiver, who is from Sri Lanka. The festival helped students of different ethnic backgrounds get to know each other and promote the idea that “we are all one people,” he said.