It’s no secret that meeting people from other cultures expands your horizons. But we also know that meeting new people is hard.
Unfortunately, most of us aren’t brave or outgoing enough to bridge the cross-cultural divide on our own. Establishing real relationships takes work; that’s why Binghamton’s programs which support a framework for bridging that cross-cultural divide should be commended.
The Theatre Department is running a bilingual production of William Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” In this raunchy performance, students from BU share the stage with students from Duoc Universidad Católica (DUOC) in Chile. This summer, the BU students will travel to Santiago, Chili to perform there with the students from DUOC.
What’s novel about the production isn’t so much the quality of the adaptation, but the bar it sets for cross-cultural collaboration. We’ve all, or at least most of us have, taken courses where we’re supposed to be learning about another country, culture or region — be it Caribbean lit, democracy in Latin America, or Global Interdependencies (G). And what we hope to see is more of this type of cross-cultural interaction in the classroom.
In the age of the Internet, this should be fairly easy. Why can’t we Skype from the classroom with students halfway around the globe? Dorm Room Diplomacy — a relatively new student group — does it. They video chat weekly with people from around the globe, including Jordan, Iraq and Afghanistan. We think that actual interaction with the people we’re supposed to be studying will give us something more important than bookish knowledge; it could give us an appreciation of these people as people, not academic subjects.
Already, some strides have been made. Last semester a class on comparative healthcare was held in conjunction with a similar class at the University of Tampere in Finland. Students got the opportunity to post back and forth online and learn from each other about the differences between their political systems and cultures.
To the University: Keep taking these steps to make us global citizens. To our fellow students: At the end of the day, becoming a global citizen is on you. As cliche as it may be, college is what you make of it. All we can do is tell you that if you take a chance and take a step out of your comfort zone — sit with somebody from a different country, hold a conversation with somebody who speaks a different language — you absolutely will not regret it.