Campus & Community

Marley White, Tesa Ziegler, Annie Jones and Claire Westcott said being part of a band has always been a dream of theirs. The four freshman girls said they never expected to create a band while at BYU–Hawaii, but once they all connected, their band, Boys on Jupiter, was formed in September of 2020.

Lily Simpson said she always wanted to follow Heavenly Father’s commandment to procreate and receive the eternal blessing of a family.

In the late 1970s, May became known as Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, or AAPI, which commemorates the success of Asian Americans and Pacific Islander figures, the History website says.

After his first baby was born in December 2021, Naoshi Murata, a junior from Nara, Japan, majoring in information systems, said he was able to see how difficult it is to raise a child and felt more grateful for his parents who raised him. He said he appreciates his father who cares for him, though not always through words but by his father’s actions.

Moments before taking the stage to perform various spins and catches in his fireknife routine, the 2022 Junior World Fireknife Champion, 11-year-old Elway Tora of Laie, said he had butterflies in his stomach. “[I] tried my best not to think about going on stage, tried not to be nervous.”

According to Hawaiian tradition, when fishing one should never say the word “fish,” shared Seth Thompson, a senior from Mililani studying finance and economics. The belief is if you do, it will scare all the fish away. Instead, when going out with fishing gear in hand, Thompson said older locals will say “holoholo” or “take it easy,” and everyone will know what they mean.

Tess Moncur said she and her husband Max, who are owners of Bananza and BYU–Hawaii alumni, believe winning the Great Ideas Competition in Fall Semester 2020 gave them the emotional boost they needed to endure the hardships of opening a small business during the pandemic.

In 2011, academics and authors David Pulsipher and Patrick Mason both attended an academic conference on the subject of the Mormon perspective on war and peace. Pulsipher said it was when they went out to get yogurt that he proposed writing a book about how the restored gospel supports peace efforts. The finished work “Proclaim Peace: The Restoration’s Answer to an Age of Conflict” was the centerpiece of the Proclaim Peace Academic Conference held at BYU–Hawaii’s campus and sponsored by the Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship.

As Proclaim Peace conference attendees walked into the Aotearoa Village at the Polynesian Cultural Center on the last day of the three-day event, they witnessed a rare Maori ceremony that BYU–Hawaii alumnus Seamus Fitzgerald said he had only seen twice in this lifetime. After the attendees were seated, Fitzgerald and Aotearoa Village Manager Kim Makekau did a call and response oration in Maori. Conference attendees said there was a tangible spirit in the air that they felt.