I'm currently a senior in the School of Kogod here at American University. My experience at AU has been a positive one and one that I wouldn't trade for another university ... until now.
Last semester I had the opportunity to study abroad. I looked through the programs that AU offered such as Australia, London and Prague. However, in my sophomore year I came across Semester at Sea through the University of Pittsburgh.
Dr. Robert Pastor has criticized this program as being a "cruise" and not worthy of receiving academic credit for lack of a cultural experience. With all due respect, how can you not think of it as being anything less than a cultural educational experience? What I learned, and what I will carry with me for the rest of my life, is something that I could not get anywhere else.
As a participant of the Semester at Sea program I have held debates with Cuban students on U.S.-Cuban relations and listened to Fidel Castro speak about our nations' and world conditions. I have been to Brazil, where I visited one of the world's largest rainforests and saw the destruction, and spent days with the Brazilian tribes learning about their way of life. I helped children with AIDS, had my eyes opened to issues of apartheid and walked through Robbin Island, Nelson Mandela's prison - all in South Africa. I walked through the desert of Tanzania, and learned of the culture of the Masa Marra tribe. I lived with a family in India, and I am aware that the caste system still does exist, but not by law. How the other side of the world was affected by World War II - the memorials, the pictures, the sights in Nagasaki, Japan - showed me not just our side, but also how their people felt. I traveled to the DMZ, the disarmament zone in South Korea, and became captured by the debates and involvement of North Korea vs. South Korea vs. the U.S. I experienced the pureness of Alaska, heard its perspective of the "lower 48." I attended Parliament in Victoria, Canada, and saw how their government works compared to ours. How can you take that away from students? How can you say that is not a cultural educational experience?
As for classes, my professors on board were diverse and knowledgeable and much more accessible than any of my AU professors. My classes were just as strenuous and demanding as my courses at AU. And each course utilized the educational elements that each country had to offer. Whether analyzing the way people did business and showing a compare/contrast situation between the U.S. and the foreign country, or following the human rights struggles of the country and the issues they were dealing with, I learned and began to understand a lot more of the world I live in.
So big deal - I wasn't being immersed in one country, one culture - but I experienced the world. It opened my eyes to world conditions, global events, and human life around the globe. I am now involved with the Multicultural Club at AU. I am also very involved in community service projects around D.C. I now see that I can make a difference and how to do that. I am also mentoring a student from China to help her become more acquainted with life in the U.S. Hopefully I can make her feel as comfortable as the people around the world made me feel while in a foreign country. I'm bringing that attitude change back to AU.
I was not just representing my country as an American, I was also representing American University, and I think I represented us well. There were five of us in attendance from AU, and we were able to share our experiences with other students from schools all over the United States. I met students from the University of Iowa, Colorado State, UNC-Chapel Hill, the list goes on. From talking to them and sharing our college experience, I know I made the right choice about going to AU. I also met many students who had participated in our Washington Semester program, which bonded us right away because their experience for that semester had offered them a lot and they looked at AU with respect and excitement.
I've experienced things some people will never get the chance to, and AU is going to prevent other students from getting this opportunity. I am outraged and I am rethinking my opinion of this university, because this ridiculous policy is going to change the way students look at their study abroad experience.
As a school with such international appeal and prestige, I think the school is making a big mistake by not allowing future AU students to take part in this incredible, life-changing journey around the world called Semester at Sea.
