I have attended three World in Conversation sessions since the beginning of my freshman year of college as a requirement for orientation for the Schreyer Honors College, again for a first-year seminar through the Eberly College of Science, and most recently as a course requirement for CHEM 212. While I understand that some students may have found value in this initiative and truly benefited from such dialogues, and I certainly recognize the need for diversity training in higher education, my personal experience with World in Conversation has been consistently subpar if not insulting to myself as a POC student. I’ve expressed my concerns with each of these instances with facilitators through the feedback they request at the end of each session and hope that they will take action for future WinC sessions, especially given Eberly and Schreyer’s continued investment into these diversity “initiatives”.

As a fresh student entering the Honors College on my second day at campus, students were asked to separate among themselves on whether they identified as a white or as a student of color which from the start, made several of my non-white peers uncomfortable. I understand the need to have a balance of students from different backgrounds within each small group but creating an environment from the get-go in such a manner sets a tone for diversity and inclusion issues at Penn State. Furthermore, there were several white-passing participants that expressed confusion on whether they would be considered white or POC (which brings up an important point about race vs. ethnicity given that many of my Arab friends, for example, would never consider themselves white in the context that we discuss white people in terms of race, culture, and ethnicity in the States). I’ve heard some students refer to this as “segregating us.”

The first two conversations I attended where intended to foster a cross-cultural dialogue and expose students to different perspectives and backgrounds, which my conversation through Schreyer managed to somewhat accomplish. Our circle had a productive discussion to bridge students from rural to suburban to urban hometowns and and each participant was able to share how their hometown has shaped each their own values, political beliefs, and their experiences and how that would influence their college experience at Penn State. I discussed what it was like going to a high school in the middle of Dauphin county, a clearly gerrymandered county that is divided politically, full of predominantly white students stuck right between miles of farmland and suburban neighborhoods. I was comfortable sharing my experiences as a first-generation Indian American Muslim because I was COMFORTABLE doing so.

This is my issue: I understand the need to encourage students to speak on issues that often aren’t discussed at home or among friends, but my life and my experiences are not a conversation starter. I cannot count the number of times during these conversations that I have been deferred to to answer questions on my culture and traditions to fill time when white students have had difficulty answering such questions or fail to contribute to the discussion. My second conversation, a student was unable to share with the group a tradition he shared with his family – which could’ve been virtually anything: making Christmas cookies with your Mom, eating ice cream after your brother’s soccer game, yearly trips to a favorite vacation spot. Every time I shared something that might not have been culturally familiar, which I am certainly happy to educate people on, for facilitators to badger with several follow-up questions nearly every time I spoke despite being among several students who barely uttered a word is frankly embarrassing and puts me on the spotlight in an uncomfortable manner.

It reminded me of this module I encountered in diversity training required by the Office of Fraternity & Sorority Life for initiation into my sorority:

“Can you help me understand your name and the cultural significance behind it”? 🤡 Can y’all just say hi and move on? I, a  promise you I don’t want to tell you the whole history and language behind my name if we just met “Joe” pic.twitter.com/oQGuGSjy7m

— -the misadventures of asma (@arsenicsodium) March 20, 2021

This module asked students how Joe, a typical Penn State student, should approach Aminah, a hijabi with a name uncommon in most Western nations:

1. Completely ignore her name and instead refer to her as “Amy”
2. “My name is Joe, nice to meet you Aminah”
3. “My name is Joe, nice to meet you Aminah” and inquire about the cultural significance behind her name

I selected option 2 in this scenario for the module to insist that option 3 invited a “Brave & Bold Dialogue” and was therefore the most ideal option. It’s exhausting for students of color or of a different culture to constantly explain themselves in nearly every situation. Aminah, who just met Joe, would (I can almost guarantee) prefer to be treated normally as if she had a common name. Sometimes students are uncomfortable being singled out for the sake of diversity. If Aminah and Joe in the future were ever in a setting where she felt comfortable sharing the history behind her name, then go for it. But do not expect her to. I am not, Aminah is not, we are not responsible for your diversity education.

Despite the program’s intention to promote cross-cultural dialogue being listed on their website, the facilitators have never tied that intent to the actual conversation itself. They have consistently failed to moderate the discussion effectively and lead students to either think about an overarching question or leave with a takeaway message that makes their time in World in Conversation worth attending and participating in. Of the three conversations I have attended, I have not left with a takeaway message or learned something new. The facilitators have never been able to steer the conversation towards something meaningful, “going with the flow”, when it just speaks to their inability to moderate.

To facilitators: Give me a reason to want to be here. Give me something to encourage others to attend this program and learn something valuable from it.

The purpose of these conversations is to facilitate discussion that might not otherwise be held outside of Pond Lab and encourage an exchange of opinions and  help others understand other people’s beliefs, but during my recent World in Conversation, the lack of acknowledgement of insensitive comments another student made during this discussion was completely unacceptable and inappropriate in any setting. In a conversation on public health with an emphasis on the COVID-19 pandemic and the inequities in healthcare access, I wanted to express my view on public health that the field goes beyond the study of disease and infection among the population in that it also concerns healthcare access, health education, the quality of the water and food we consume, our mental health, the climate and pollution, family dynamics – all factors that affect the population’s health as a whole. This student, in order to express his point that an individual’s own health and the decisions they make regarding it do not concern or affect the health of other people, had somehow circumvented the entire topic.

This student had referenced the Holocaust as an analogy in that if he was a given the option by Hitler himself to step out of line and refuse to be a Nazi (it was unclear if there were any repercussions for doing so in this analogy), that he, out of peer pressure, would proceed to kill women and children. 

A difference of opinion, an exchange of perspectives should never entail tolerating insensitive comments such as the one this student ignorantly made, and I could go on and on that the Holocaust should never be used to make a political point. This comment had nothing to do with public health. His point could’ve been expressed in a number of different ways. But what bothered me even more was that both facilitators had barely acknowledged this student’s words nor did they actively steer the conversation to something more productive that actually concerned the focus of the session.

Again, I am only one person that has had to sit through these sessions surprisingly three times as a requirement, and there are certainly students out there that have benefited from conversations like these. But as a POC who shares the same sentiment about World in Conversation as several other students, World in Conversation either needs to better train their facilitators to be more effective or restructure their conversations to avoid unnecessarily putting a spotlight on POC students to act as educators on diversity. While research remains iffy on whether diversity education is effective in promoting cultural awareness, this program does nothing to help it’s case.

I have been asked by Eberly and Schreyer staff on whether I would recommend that World in Conversation remain a requirement for future students by investing money into continuing this diversity initiative, and I would again like to express that World in Conversation is one of the worst things I have had to sit through and perhaps evidence of a much larger diversity issue at Penn State. It’s clear that the reality of diversity and inclusion on campus cannot be conveniently addressed within a short, unstructured session which is what the coordinators of this program fail to realize.

If you have had to attend a World in Conversation as a requirement or by your own free will, please feel free to comment your experience and whether you feel that this was a beneficial experience for you if you are comfortable sharing!