OXFORD, Miss. – The stakes are high in this year’s One
Mississippi-hosted OMazing Games event at the University of
Mississippi, as the four students on the winning team will receive
tickets to the upcoming presidential debate.
One Mississippi, a student organization dedicated to enhancing diverse social groups on the Oxford campus, will select 80 UM students of all races, cultures and backgrounds to participate in the Olympics-inspired competition Friday and Saturday (Sept. 5-6). The deadline to apply is Tuesday (Sept. 2). Applications are available at the One Mississippi’s Voter Registration Drive station in the Student Union and online at http://www.omazinggames.com .
On Friday, beginning at 5 p.m. at The Inn at Ole Miss, competitors meet each other, share a meal and participate in cultural mapping exercises as they get to know their teammates, build relationships and discuss racism as it applies to different ethnicities, said Melissa Cole, OMazing Games co-coordinator and a senior biology major from Jackson.
The public is invited free of charge to attend the actual competition on Saturday. The games begin at 1 p.m. in the Turner Center, with 20 four-member teams competing in athletic events, mind-teasing trivia and other activities such as Thumb War, Cole said. The competition will end with a political quiz bowl, in which participants will answer questions about political history and structure and current events around the world. Members of the winning team will be awarded tickets to the Sept. 26 presidential debate in the Gertrude C. Ford Center.
“The debate tickets are the draw, but I think people will find much more rewarding the opportunity to have a meal with someone that looks different from you, to hear about someone’s cultural struggles and their experience, and also to work on a team with people who are not similar to yourself,” said Josh Davis, assistant director of alumni affairs and co-coordinator of the event. “I think this event is so successful because it forces students to break down those social barriers but then to build a common or shared experience together. There’s this dilution of what someone’s stereotype was but then there’s this forging together of a relationship or of an understanding – definitely a forging together of a shared experience.”
Applicants for the competition must provide a brief demographic profile, answering questions including place of birth, ethnicity, political affiliation, sexual orientation and religion, Cole said.
“This event relies heavily on international students,” Davis said. “A lot of times when we talk about diversity on this campus it is probably spoken about in terms of black and white, but our international student population is very important and critical to the success of this event. We need black applicants, we need white applicants, but because the population of our international students is the lowest percentage of our students we really need their involvement so that we can have a representation of students from all different countries.”
The popular OMazing events began at UM in 2007, drawing more than 300 student applicants wanting to compete in the reality show-based OMazing Race, Davis said. Written evaluations from participants encouraged One Mississippi to host another competition this year.
“Many of the participants said there is not an opportunity created like this on the university’s campus where a white student, a Jewish student, a student from Lebanon and a student from Argentina have the chance to have a meal together and to have serious and intimate dialogue about what their culture is like, what their ethnicity is like, what their challenges are like and then have the chance to go beyond that and share a common experience by competing,” Davis said. “The students see they have a lot more in common than what appears to the eye.”
Davis said he hopes the event helps students actively integrate their social networks, “not by chance, but by attention.”
This year, the event is offered earlier in the semester to target freshmen before they have forged social circles, Cole said.
“I think a lot of times people start only seeing the world through their own eyes, or seeing the world through the eyes of people like them, and they miss out on all these experiences and all these other ideas from people all over the world,” she said. “We want to make sure that is a part of the college experience. To make it a priority now would change the way you think when you go out in the world – change the way you appreciate life.”
The student competition is among dozens of special events and activities planned at UM to prepare students and local audiences for the historic presidential debate.
For more information, visit the OMazing Games and One Mississippi .