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In its fifth year at Onalaska High School, the annual Diversity Day celebration has established itself as a popular tradition. “We’ve received a lot of positive feedback from students and staff,” said John Horman, the organizer of the event and a guidance counselor at Onalaska.

Horman, along with Ujima, a student-run club created to promote diversity, had been planning last Thursday’s Diversity Day celebration since December.

“There’s a lot that goes into it from contacting the speakers to setting up the different rooms and sessions,” Horman said.

The group works tirelessly to put together the event that offers students the chance to pick three breakout sessions from among 35 options.

The sessions, whose topics ranged from Native American storytelling, martial arts and belly dancing to beating addictions, body image and disability awareness, were designed to encourage the students to learn about a new culture and to inspire them to ask questions.

“The students have the opportunity to be exposed to a new culture, a new way of thinking, or a new lifestyle,” Horman said. “If there’s something about the culture that don’t understand, they’re encouraged to ask questions.”

The most popular sessions seemed to be about the more controversial subjects. The Battle of the Sexes session had the male and female students asking uncensored questions to the opposite sex to get an honest answer. Sometimes, the truth was hard to hear.

“Some of the what the guys said was shocking,” said Katy Hoppens, a senior who participated in the session, “But it was the truth.”

Other popular sessions included newcomers to the event. One was the belly dancing session, where students learned about the art of Middle Eastern dance and left with a few new moves.

A session on substance abuse premiered this year at the event and received an overwhelmingly positive response from the students.

The current hot-button issue of party politics has been all over the news of late, so the session on political parties was alluring to a lot of the students. Dr. Joseph Heim, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse and a politics aficionado, led the students through the complicated lines between Democrats and Republicans.

At the end of the Diversity Day event, students were asked to suggest a few topics that should be included in Diversity Day.

“It’s great because the students get a say in what they want to learn about and experience,” Horman said. “We’re always looking for new topics and new presenters who are willing to speak.”