OXFORD,
Miss. – During their second annual retreat, University of Mississippi
student members of the campus organization One Mississippi faced facts
about the need for more cultural interaction among UM students and
mapped a plan for progress.
On the recent three-day outing at
Lake Tiak’ohata near Louisville, more than 70 UM students worked as a
team to identify barriers and establish plans of action to promote
social integration on campus, said Susan Glisson, director of the
William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation, who attended the
event.
“We wanted to make sure that we built an organization
that could carry out the work started on the retreat, so we established
teams to address housing, freshman programming, education,
multicultural services and events on campus in order to promote social
integration,” said Jake McGraw, a junior public policy leadership and
economics major from Oxford and chief coordinator of One Mississippi.
Committee leaders will be elected at the next One Mississippi meeting at 6 p.m. Tuesday (Feb. 24) in Bondurant Hall, Room 204C. The meeting is open to all individuals who have been or would like to become involved with One Mississippi.
Since the retreat, two new committees, Alumni Outreach and Greek Life, have been created, McGraw said. Also, the former Multicultural Services committee was renamed International Affairs, he added.
Some of the organization’s action plans include the following: contact alums, raise awareness of international students’ concerns, promote interaction within Greek Life and coordinate initiatives with other organizations on campus, Glisson said.
“I think that (the students) gained insight of the world around them and the different perspectives that exist,” said Melissa Cole, a junior biology major from Jackson and event coordinator. On the retreat, the members agreed that students can attend the same university and have completely different experiences, she added.
The committee leaders make up the organization’s executive council. The council works closely with the chief coordinator and deputy coordinator, who facilitate collaboration among the committees and ensure that One Mississippi is making progress toward the organization’s mission, McGraw said.
The group of students attending the retreat represented racial diversity, international students, students of all classifications including graduate school, Greeks and non-Greeks and members of numerous campus organizations, McGraw said. Students were selected to attend the retreat through an open application process, he added.
The weekend’s activities included “story circles,” which are traditions that were adopted from the civil rights movement to foster understanding of cultural differences through listening and dialogue, Cole said.
“Before anything can change, there must be understanding,” she said. “Before there can be understanding, there must be dialogue.”
Another activity the students participated in was “cultural mapping,” in which the students were given different ways to separate themselves into groups and then to identify the group’s commonality. The purpose of the weekend’s activities was “to achieve a bond between the students,” Cole said.
“Going on the retreat showed me just how much students on this campus crave to be able to bond with each other, thus, making me ever passionate to make sure that this happens,” she said.
Besides Glisson, Michael Johansson, International Programs director, also attended the retreat. Many younger students attended the retreat this year compared to last year, McGraw said. The younger students have given the organization “a new energy that will help us build momentum,” he added.
UM’s Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation and the Office of Student Life sponsored the retreat at no charge to the students. Students forged new relationships that will be meaningful to them for a lifetime, Glisson said.
One Mississippi’s mission is “to create a shared experience for all students at Ole Miss,” by “replacing barriers to cross cultural interaction with opportunities for exchange,” according to One Mississippi’s Facebook Web page.
For more information on UM’s One Mississippi, contact Jake McGraw at jkmcgaw@olemiss.edu or visit the organization’s Facebook group, One Mississippi.