Showcase of Teacher Writing
Fay T.F. Chang
Writer’s Memo
I begin and proceed in this writing exercise with a keen awareness of who I am and where I speak from. Being an international student new to the campus signifies me as a “Double Other” reinforcing an ethnographical vision, regulated by national and racial differences. Thus, it becomes particularly crucial to launch my career as a student, a teacher, and a writer in U.S. academia by engaging actively in cross-racial relationships and bridging the gap between different cultural backgrounds and a more unified school experience. When being asked to conduct an ethnographic writing of a place on campus, I choose to write a place that immediately “constructs” and “marks” my identity as an international student. MacMillan Hall comprises a multicultural center, several administrative units for intercultural education, and more significantly to me, the International Office. The office requires every international student to “maintain good immigration status” during his or her study in the U.S., constantly reminding and designating one’s status as an “outsider.” Writing about the place itself allows me to offer both insider and outsider’s perspectives on its nature and its culture, since I am not only regulated by the institution, but I am identified with it and at once reaching out. Further, the act of writing empowers me to be a constructor rather than a construct, a narrator rather than a framed picture, and an interpreter rather than a representation of Other. I begin to conceive MacMillan as a space negotiating multi-layers of cross-cultural relationships on campus. I begin to discover, explore, and enact the significance of cultural diversity it represents. I begin to see and to perform the connections between “writing and action” in conducting ethnographic research (Barnard 105).
Retrieved from MacMillan Web Page, 8.19.2008
“US or them:” Creating Diversity within MacMillan Hall and without
MacMillan Hall represents the cultural heartland of Miami University where the notion of diversity has been most fostered and respected nowadays. Located symbolically at the heart of the Oxford campus, MacMillan functions not as the center of power itself, but as a locus at which the power dynamics between different cultures, identities, and disciplines are better explored and negotiated. The building is devoted to intercultural and international education, counseling, outreach, and advocacy. It provides a collective and interdisciplinary space for American, Women’s, Jewish, International, Black World, and Latin American Studies programs. However, far from being a merely academic arena, MacMillan Hall is a haven and a fortress for cultural, ethnic, and sexual minority group members to nurture and create feelings of pride and belonging.
The lower level is especially saved for student activities and gatherings comprised by diverse ethnic American associations, international language and culture clubs, transsexual allies and so forth. Over time the space has become a “third space” where visions and practices from non-Western or non-dominant American culture are no longer perceived as perverse or alien; rather, different values and cultural practices become lovingly engaged and peacefully modified for a more harmonious, shared present, and a more promising future of friendship, love and peace. With its mosaic floors, circular designs, and a large, round glass skylight highlighting the building’s front entrance, MacMillan Hall is reminiscent of the grandiose ancient Roman arena in Italy, the cradle of the Olympic Games. Echoing the Olympics, MacMillan embodies the spirit of “worldmindedness,” ensuring a personal, communal, social, national and international harmonization through promoting inclusion of difference.
The call for diversity in U.S. higher education and in its cultural landscape is not new, but this “liberatory” humanist view of education still elicits many concerns and ambivalence among conservatists and parents. Many hold that the balance of the twin goals—institutional unity and cultural pluralism—is difficult to evaluate and achieve. It might be true that the ultimate goal of unity and pluralism may not co-exist in schooling as a whole; however, it is through thoughtful exploration of differences that a deeper unity across groups occurs. A more urgent need to create a “diverse democracy” in areas of institutional mission, campus community, and curricular focus arises from the fact that the demographic portrait of U.S. society and academy in the 21st century has changed dramatically. Incoming students nowadays represents a spectrum of diversity by race, sex, ethnicity, class, sexual identity, religious belief, ability, linguistic groupings, and age. Consequently, the U.S. higher educational communities must not only foster intellectual development but also provide skills and experiences necessary for effective participation in a diverse society. Guarasci and Cornwell have argued that the nation needs both a multicentric definition of democracy and a multicentric approach to education:
We need a democratic order that can contain the contradiction of difference and connection, self and community, one and many. It must be democracy in which commonality is understood as negotiated and constructed, not inherited or natural. This is a community in which paradox, contradiction, and ambiguity can be appreciated rather than feared.
(Democratic Education 8)
As the multicultural United States of the 21st century is truly a new frontier, we, as educators, must cultivate within our students the capacity of becoming border-crossers in the evolving democracy of present American reality.
I try to show above that the appeal for diversity in higher education has become urgent and essential in an increasingly globalizing and globalized U.S. social and academic realm. My next query, then, is how the educational community at Miami University, Oxford responds to, coincides or conflicts with this larger national trend toward globalization and diverse democracy. To be more specific, what significant role does MacMillan Hall play in connecting this smaller, cohesive Miami community to the national, or even the global educational scenario?
Among the efforts to stimulate and maintain diversity on Miami campus is the institution of the Center for American and World Cultures (CAWC) in MacMillan Hall in 2004. According to its Web site, the mission of CAWC is to “promote positive intergroup relations among students, faculty, and staff on campus and ultimately to improve the climate for diversity on campus.” The center serves as a cross-cultural, interdisciplinary bridge for Miami people, endeavoring to prepare them to become “informed, progressive, inclusive global citizens” (CAWC par. 1). It creates a kaleidoscopic space within which the intellectual and emotional experiences from students and faculty, from school and community, as well as from dominant and minority cultural groups can jointly converge. Closely allied with the University Multicultural Council (UMC), and located next door to the College of Arts and Science, the center engages actively in curricular transformation, multicultural development, and student-society life as well. Miami undergraduates now are required to take a 3-credit course that explores diverse cultures of the United States. Courses focus on U.S. Civil Rights history and race relations are largely expanded in various disciplines. Meanwhile, CAWC strengthens the collaborations between student and academic affairs by fostering “Residential Theme Learning Communities,” an innovative program bringing increasingly nationwide attention. These learning communities link student affairs with academic programs by having faculty members visit students’ residence halls to discuss themes of diversity, leadership and culture. The significance of these programs lies in a belief—a basic Miami tenet—that the U.S. students today cannot participate as active citizens in such a pluralistic democratic society without building and acquiring intercultural competencies in themselves.
Another standout effort undertaken by CAWC and the MacMillan Hall as a whole is to construct the campus as a global city. In the wake of the building’s 2004 renovation, a more inclusive campus climate and more constructive exchanges of views on diversity has reached unprecedented height, which can be reflected in the burgeoning numbers of international students on campus. During the years of 2003 and 2004, international students at Miami represent only 0.5 percent of the total and the statistics shows no upward trend at all. However, within four years after the institution of CAWC, the number of international students has doubled, now comprising 1 percent of the total Miami students (“Diversity Facts”). The increment of international student members is undeniably large, but how does this trend account for and contribute to the promotion of diversity among students, curricula, and communities? In what ways do the U.S. students benefit or disadvantage from frequent and sustained interaction with international students?
As an international student, I reject the assumption that broadening the acceptance of international students into the U.S. Academy might degrade or “pollute” its learning environment. This assumption has two implications and thus deleterious consequences. First, it seeks to maintain an “US-them” hierarchy and separation, blindly constructing America as a center of power to all otherized cultures. Second, it reinforces the idea that access to the university is an upward movement, or, to borrow Jay Dolmage’s phrase, climbing “steep steps” leading to the “ivory tower” (Mapping Disability 16). The consequence here is the most self-destructive one because not only the “Cultural Other” but also the culturally diverse Americans could be excluded from the standardized, elite privileged institution. They are both considered “disabled” under similar conditions, such as their disability of using proper English. Here, in crux, lies the need to reconsider and to envision the access of U.S. academia to all students, regardless of their ethnicity and (dis)ability.
Standing in the MacMillan Hall’s lobby, face to face with its wall adorned with numerous national flags bathed, sparkling in sunlight, I feel peace, love, and at home. MacMillan creates an authentic space—a space of dialogues and possibilities—within which the stagnant, hierarchical relationships between US and Other, between center and peripheral, and between dominant and minority groups are disrupted and negotiated. It is not just a cavern for marginalized people to hide inside and not just a bureaucracy for international students to maintain “good immigration status.” MacMillan is a global arena for world-class learners and facilitators to develop leadership and citizenship in order to participate actively in the U.S. pluralistic democratic society, and in a greater globalized world.
Works Cited
Barnard, Ian. “Anti-Ethnography.” Composition Studies 34.1 (Spring 2006): 95-107.
CAWC. 2005. Miami University. 5 Sept 2008
http://casnov1.cas.muohio.edu/cawc/About_Us.html.
“Diversity Fact: Enrollment.” 2008. Miami University. 5 Sept 2008
http://
www.miami.muohio.edu/documents_and_policies/diversity_facts/enrollment.cfm.
Dolmage, Jay. “Mapping Composition: Inviting Disability in the Front Door.” Disability and the Teaching of Writing: A Critical Sourcebook. Ed. Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson and Brenda Jo Brueggemann. Ohio: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008. 14-27.
Guarasci, Richard and Grant H. Cornwell. Democratic Education in an Age of Difference: Redefining Citizenship in Higher Education. San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 1997.