Anya Cohen
News Editor
Earlier this year, The College of Wooster’s Center for Diversity and Global Engagement introduced Cross-Cultural Connections, a program that aims to continue education outside of the classroom.
“One of our main goals is to extend the classroom into other living spaces,” said Director of the Center for Diversity and Global Engagement Nancy Grace. “By doing this we will act on one of our major college missions, which is to create a much more vigorous, rich learning community and extend the creativity of the classroom into other spaces.”
In order to realize this goal, Cross-Cultural Connections, otherwise known as C3, hosts forums where students are free to ask questions and voice their own opinions.
“When we are talking about socio-economic class, race or disability, there tends to be a fear of asking questions,” said Program Coordinator for the Office of Multicultural Student Affairs and the Office of International Student Affairs Danny Ha. “People are worried that they might offend somebody else if they don’t know all of the background information about the topic. Here we are trying to create a safe environment for people to ask questions without needing to fear that they will receive any kind of backlash for not having previous knowledge of the subject,” Ha said.
So far, C3 has hosted two forums. For the first, they collaborated with the Department of Off Campus Study to create an LGBTQ off campus study panel where five “out” students shared their experiences studying overseas. For the second forum, C3 collaborated with International Student Ambassadors and several first year seminar classes to produce a forum on eco-tourism.
C3 hopes that by collaborating with other groups, they will be able to reach a greater audience and acquire a significantly more diverse student perspective.
“The more you guys collaborate, the more you will actually be able to accomplish,” said Grace.
Students who are interested in participating in C3 can do so on three different levels. There first level is the executive board, which consists of five students: Fahim Aziz ’15, Naveeshini Chandran ’15, Derick Evans ’13, Da Sol Kuen ’14 and Julie Shuff ’14. Together, the executive board plans and organizes C3 events. The next level is C3 plus, where members assist the executive board in planning events. Members of C3 plus are required to attend a minimum of five C3 events each semester. The third level of C3 includes students who are interested in the program but cannot commit to the same amount of time as members of C3 plus. Members of C3 are required to attend two events each semester.
“It’s important because it’s a way for students to continue to learn about multicultural phenomena in a more comfortable setting,” said Shuff. “It’s always a challenge to get a program up and running but we’ve had a lot of great support from students and all levels of the administration. I can’t wait to see where this project goes.”
C3 will host events throughout the rest of the semester. All students, whether members of C3 or not, are encouraged to attend C3 events.