Hale Center Events

Annual Events

• Family Affair and Reunion

  Hosted by the Hale Center, a Family Affair and Reunion is a beginning-of-the-year event that enables university departments and support units as well as student organizations to highlight their services and program offerings. Faculty and staff can connect with students who need to know that there is support within university units for them to successfully complete their degree at The Ohio State University. 

  Family Affair and Reunion, like all of the Hale Center’s events and activities, is open to everyone without any restriction based on race, ethnicity, sex, gender, sexual orientation or any other protected class. 

• Thanksgiving Dinner

  The Ohio State University’s Thanksgiving Dinner began in 1996 as a gathering of 25 students in the Hale Center. It was initiated by two graduate students, Bill Batson and Lori Waite, who did not have a place to go for the traditional Thanksgiving meal. They invited six of their friends and were prepared to have a potluck Thanksgiving meal. A few days prior to the meal, the Hale Center’s Larry Williamson Jr., believing that other students must be in the same predicament, asked Batson to make fliers to place in the south campus dorms. As a result of the students’ efforts — and years later, with the support of the Office of International Affairs and specifically, Kevin Harty, associate director of International Education — the dinner blossomed into one of the largest free Thanksgiving events at any college or university, typically attracting 1,500 students annually. 

• Pre-Kwanzaa Celebration

  Pre-Kwanzaa at The Ohio State University celebrates the event created by Dr. Maulana Karenga in 1966.

• MLK Celebration

  A highlight of Black History Month, the annual MLK Celebration is held on or near the birthday of the late Martin Luther King Jr. The tribute to the civil rights icon typically includes remarks from a special guest lecturer and scholarship presentations as well as a stirring musical performance from the African American Voice Gospel Choir. 

• Juneteenth

  Juneteenth, now a federal holiday, marks the date —June 19, 1865 —when Union soldiers arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas, and announced to the remaining 250,000 people still enslaved in that state that they had been freed by executive decree under the terms of the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. The Hale Center seeks to partner with other Ohio State and Columbus community organizations to celebrate Juneteenth.