Lafayette values DIVERSITY... Really?! Seriously?! Think again!

This week is Extravaganza 2010 week at Lafayette - a weeklong annual festival celebrating world cultures and diversity... For this occasion, the campus was again decorated with flags representing the different countries that students on campus come from.

Again, like every year since my freshman year, flags were stolen (or taken down, if you feel that's too harsh of a word) from the poles on the Quad. On Tuesday night, three flags were completely gone, while one was ripped off. Of course, if you go by tomorrow, you will probably not see any flag missing, as the college was very helpful in offering to replace them...

To repeat, the stealing of flags from the Quad has been happening for several years, yet the only response from the College is to replace the missing flags, buy new ones, and now employ Bear Security to guard them at night... Oh, and they also decided that from next year no flags will be put on the Quad any more...

Wait, is this the same college that praises about educating the students in the spirit of diversity - respect and appreciation for cultures and other such stuff ?! The college that has more than one office and 5-10 student organizations dealing with diversity?!

Ever since I came to Lafayette different people took care to let me know how valued my presence is, as an international student, and how much value everybody here puts on diversity. Of course, the point being that just by being here I increase diversity. However, most people's reaction when I tell them where I am from is "Cool!" Then, some try to figure out where Romania is, and then some want to know "So... how is Romania?". But that's where it stops most of the time. As an international student, you kind of remain an exhibit of diversity for many people.

One of my flatmates in London was once reading a booklet called "Stuff White People Like" and one entry was "talking about diversity". I thought that was true back then too, but now it just struck me as so obvious!

Diversity, as it appears, is just a measure of how many international students there are on campus, how many types of ethnic cuisine you tried, where you went to study abroad and how many surrounding countries you visited, and perhaps how many talks about international issues you attend.

ps:I was tempted to write a poem about this at first... but while I'm sure that would totally solve the problem, I decided plain words would express my point better.

Linked IN!

Yeey, I'm finally Linked In. I feel very professional now, so wanted to put this out there.

Ioana Marin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ioanaamarin

And because I'm going all into professionalism, I also have a website: sites.lafayette.edu/marini. Now who would have believed this?! Well certainly not me a couple of years back, but, as it turns out, I did change my mind about networking and blogging.

So... unleash technology!

Btw, did I mention that I am in a Topeka state of mind?! Thank you Google for this awesomely random April Fools' uhmm... statement :)

mirror mirror... uhm... in between...

It’s not been long since I first learned about marriage ceremonies in Islam – perhaps about 2 years, when I made Nafis describe it to me in great detail… And I remember I was very surprised when he told me that after the marriage ritual is performed, the groom and the bride see each other in a mirror. Naturally I was like – “But why? As if they haven’t seen each other before or won’t look at each other from then on”… Well he didn’t really manage to explain it to me too well, but… I have been thinking about it when occasions popped in. Like when I was reading “A Thousand Splendid Suns” and the narrator describes Miriam’s wedding – she sees a man’s big and quite old face in the mirror and thinks “so this is my husband”… And then when Nafis’s childhood friend got married and I saw pictures of the bride and the groom and the mirror J

So last night as I was trying to fall asleep I was randomly thinking about this again… (quite random, I admit). But I was thinking of me being the bride (ami jani - jani, bhaia…) and having that mirror in front of me thinking ‘so this is, now, my husband…’ So I realized that, despite different interpretations of this mirror as being a symbol of purity and cleanliness, or a window to the Holy Quran, which is usually held under the mirror, or for good luck, or because the bride and groom are supposed to be shy and not look at each other in front of their parents… that mirror has quite a definite and rational role in a discreet way… which is exactly of realizing that the person sitting next to you is now your husband or your wife and seeing them as they are…

I realized recently that the image we have of ourselves is our own image and not really how the others see us… and I mean this literally, not the larger image of self that each of us have… I realized this on a recent visit to the Wellcome Collection, where they actually had a mirror that reflected the way the others see you – quite cool and it’s weird that I never thought of this before. So this ‘truth’ mirror shows how the other people see you – and it is a different image and, for me, it was a weird sensation... I also remembered that, when I look into the mirror and there is someone else besides me, my image of them is somewhat different and I often have the sensation of - ‘oh, so this is X…’. And this is because I see them as they see themselves and not as I usually see them!

So, coming back to the mirror and the wedding – it all makes a lot more sense now. I guess when one looks into that mirror and sees their new spouse it really is a moment of “So this is it! You’re my husband/ wife now and with you as you are I will spend the rest of my life (or a number of years, depending on the perspective :P). And with you as you are I’ll share everything and with you I’ll have to deal every day.” And hopefully, and perhaps if they love each other, they would also thinks something like ‘cool, I can really imagine doing that – I’m glad it’s you J’

I suppose this would really help at a time when one minute you’re single the other you’re married and so many things happen around you.

In conclusion, I don’t know how this whole thing sounds, but I feel like it’s a nice working theory for myself J and it feels good when I can explain myself something – not that this is not what my brain does every day.