We welcome the entire SMU community to visit our Día de los Muertos / Day of the Dead altar within the Student Success and First Generation Center (GR70, Winona Campus)! If you are part of SGPP in Minneapolis, please email me any photos or words you would like for me to add to the altar.
Each year, the altar is present in our office by November 1, where it remains throughout the month of November. We encourage everyone to stop by, whether to visit, pay your respects, and/or contribute your offerings to the altar.
Click here for more information on Día de los Muertos /Day of the Dead.
There are two large framed photographs on the altar that we put up every year. One of them is in memory of Victoria Arias, who graduated from San Miguel High School in Tucson, AZ and was Countdown to College (C2C) graduate of Saint Mary’s, who would have been an FGI (First Generation Initiative) Scholar, majoring in biochemistry, with the intent of becoming a trauma surgeon. She passed away in 2017 at the age of 18.
The other framed photograph is in memory of Jermaine Cullum, Jr., who had just finished his second year of C2C at Saint Mary’s. Jermaine was a sophomore, attending Christ the King Jesuit Prep School in Chicago, IL, when he died at the age of 16.
If you leave your offerings on the altar, we will store them and put them out again next year (aside from food offerings), but if you would like to come back for your message, photograph, flowers, toys, or other symbolic offering, please let me know, so that I can set it aside for you to pick up once the month has closed.
Thank you SMU community! We look forward to seeing you! Please share with others.
-Jennifer Hanifl, Director of First Generation Initiative
Questions or Contributions, and can’t make it in? Email me at jhanifl@smumn.edu
