When I first moved to beautiful Columbia, MO as part of InterVarsity, I was the only staff within 120 miles. The other two staff hubs in Missouri were in Kansas City and Saint Louis. Kansas City was part of the Kansas Area and I was with Saint Louis in the Missouri Area. During my intern year, because I had weekly training in Saint Louis, I actually had an apartment in both places. Monday through Friday I would be in CoMO, then Friday through Monday I'd be in Saint Louis. Thankfully, the rent out here is cheap enough that I was able to do that without too much trouble.
After I moved to CoMO full time, I still had to travel to Saint Louis for staff meetings but once a semester or so, the Saint Louis staff team would come out to CoMO so I wouldn't have to travel. At first, it didn't make a lot of sense to me since it meant more cars and more effort to get a bunch of people here when it was so easy for me to hop in my car and make my way to Saint Louis, but now that our Mid-MO staff team has grown and my family has too, I'm thankful that this tradition still holds true. Yesterday, the Saint Louis team hopped in their cars and trekked across I-70 to for our monthly staff meeting.
Our team and our campuses where work is being done has expanded over the past 10 years but Mizzou is still our hub so we met on campus. Meg was out of town for different staff meetings with the National International Student Ministry Team so it was up to me to host. Thankfully, being around her for a while has taught me a number of things about being a good host. We had planned out our staff meeting a few weeks prior so we had a good sense of what we were going to do and these meetings always have the same basic feel. We have 4 basic elements to every meeting: spiritual formation, lunch, training, and business. Our training was going to be centered around leadership recruitment for our chapters.
Then, last week, President Trump signed the travel ban, and our plans shifted a little bit.
Regardless of your political leanings, and whether or not you think the travel ban is a good idea or a bad idea, the truth is that it had consequences for international students. We know of at least a handful of students who were supposed to come back the US from their home countries in the few days after the Executive Order was signed who could not and had to wait in limbo while clarification was made. We also know through conversations with international students that many were feeling uneasy because they didn't know if their countries would be next on the list or if they would be able to go back home after the semester was over. I've gotten in trouble for letting my politics show on this blog before. This isn't about that so please don't read too much into what I'm sharing. I'm just telling you that these are some of the effects we've seen.
Post-Executive Order, the team decided to switch up the training, not to directly address the executive order, but sort of in response to it. Instead of talking about student leadership, we were going to be a little more experiential and see if we could figure out how Mizzou felt about its campus in terms of it being a welcoming environment and how much students engaged with people of other cultures. Our plan was simple: stand outside with posters asking those two questions, then ask students to identify their thoughts with stickers and talk to them about why they put what they put. Here are a few photos of us at work:
- When you ask a good question, you get good answers: Y'all, it was COLD yesterday. The temperature was in the low 30's with a little bit of a wind. We really shouldn't have been out there. And yet, folk still stopped by. Most didn't stay long to talk but people were still intrigued enough to stop by and put a sticker on our board.
- Personal experiences reign supreme: It's no secret that Mizzou has had its troubles in terms of cross cultural conflict in the past year. Still, the phrase that we heard over and over again was, "Well, Mizzou has had a problem but I'M welcoming so the campus must we welcoming.
- No one wants to admit areas for growth. You may not be able to see it on these photos but regardless of whether or not someone things that Mizzou is welcoming to every culture on campus, EVERYONE says they engage with people from other cultures regularly. I've been on campus long enough to know that isn't the case but I'm not so sure that I would want to admit it either.
One last really fun story. While we were out there, a Black student came by to put a sticker on our board. On the question of whether or not the campus was welcoming to all cultures, he put his sticker all the way to the left, on the "False" side. As he was explaining his experiences on campus, including being called the "N-word" on multiple occasions, a White student came up to put his sticker on the board. After the Black student shared his story then left for class, the White student said, "well, I WAS going to say true, but based on hearing that guy, it seems like maybe it isn't so much."
Friends, we're calling that a breakthrough towards a more welcoming Mizzou. =0).
Have an excellent day!
~Adam
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