AIESEC Hosts Global Citizen’s Fair to Increase Cultural Understanding

By Waverly Colville

AIESEC at Mizzou and the MU Office of Service-Learning hosted their annual Global Citizen’s Fair at the Multicultural Center on March 17.

At the fair, students discovered ways to volunteer or intern abroad through AIESEC, an international not-for-profit organization that sends students abroad, and how to gain academic credit through the Office of Service-Learning.  AIESEC at Mizzou hoped that its location would attract people who wanted to learn about different cultures, vice president of communications Lucy Wynn said.

AIESEC programs are located in 124 countries and territories. In 2013, students participated in over 28,000 internships. Local chapters are active across the US and around the world to promote student travel.

The cost to work with AIESEC is $500. The application is free, but there is a $150 fee to register to the online database that houses the opportunities and $350 to find the program. The price of the plane ticket is not included.

“Working with AIESEC is more cost effective than a study abroad, especially if you get credit through the Office of Service-Learning,” Wynn said.

These international internships are eligible for 3-6 credit hours.  Most often the credit is counted as general honors credit, though every student is eligible even if they are not an honors student.  Students may also work with their specific departments for credit specific to their major or minor.

“Many students say finances are why they can’t go but there are lots of opportunities for credit and scholarships through all the different offices on campus,” Margaret Cleveland, student assistant in the Office of Service-Learning said.

AIESEC at Mizzou hopes to send at least 30 students abroad each year.  The number of students per trip depends on location or job.  AIESEC organizes individual trips and “batch matches” which send a large group of students together from around the country to the same location.

“AIESEC tries to send students from a bunch of universities so while you’re learning about a different culture in another country, you’re also learning from other students in the United States,” Wynn said.

While abroad, AIESEC sets up transportation, living conditions and other amenities. They are a support system for a student’s entire stay, so they are never on their own. AIESEC at Mizzou maintains regular contact with other AIESEC chapters all around the world to exchange internship opportunities in Missouri for international students and around the world for MU students.

By creating a more global community at MU, Wynn hopes people learn about otherand themselves, then bring those lessons back to campus.

“By traveling, people learn about the people they visit and it affects them on a personal level and they grow as a human,” Wynn said.  “An individual gets changed.”

Cleveland also stressed the importance of traveling to students.

“By participating in another culture you learn so much and about yourself as a person,” Cleveland said. “If you don’t do it when you’re in college, you’ll regret it later in life.”

AIESEC was founded based on these principles. A group of students started this program after World War II because they found that misconceptions about different cultures were a major cause of conflict. They hope to raise global awareness by increasing cross-cultural communication.

“We want people to be more aware of the issues in the world,” Wynn said. “I really hope that through AIESEC’s presence on campus, students can understand people better.  There’s a lot of fear when you don’t understand someone that really is unnecessary.”

Canada Days shows strong relationship between U.S. and Canada

By Marilyn Haigh

Canada was the country of discussion during seven campus events that happened during MU’s 11th annual Canada Days celebration.

Catherine Tadros, the Director of Economic Affairs for the Québec Government Office Chicago, displayed a slide with images of pancakes smothered in syrup, Chicago’s L train, Assassin’s Creed, Family Guy and a landscape plagued by drought.

She asked students what the images had in common. The answer: They’re all products of Canada, the United States’ largest trading partner and biggest neighbor.

“When the U.S. sneezes, Canada catches a cold,” Tadros said.

Tabros addressed a crowd of over 60 students in her lecture, one of the events of Canada Days, called “Québec: Creative, Competitive, and Open to the World,” in Bush Auditorium on Feb. 24. She discussed a lot of facts about Canada – Quebec, especially:

 

• Canada is second largest country in the world after Russia, but most of its population is concentrated along the U.S.-Canada border.

 

• A year at McGill University, largely considered the best university in Canada, coming in at about $3,000 for Quebec citizens.

 

• Quebec produces 80% of the world’s maple syrup.

 

• Québec is a center for animation and post-production for the film industry. Gamers can thank video game developer Ubisoft’s Quebec City office for its role in developing Assassin’s Creed. Post-production for 2015 Best Picture winner Birdman was done in Québec, Tabros said, in another example of a close U.S.-Canada relationship.

 

• Trade between Québec and Missouri is about $1 billion each way.

 

Part of the focus of Canada Days is increasing awareness about opportunities living in and trading with Canada. James Endersby, director of Canadian Studies, organized the event with the Canadian consulate. The consulate has a program to fund bringing speakers into American universities and recommended Tadros for the event.

Endersby said he was pleased that students across disciplines attended the event. Business, Political Science, Economics and Romance Languages were among the departments represented, he said.

“Canadian Studies is pretty small but it’s funny, once you announce that there is a program for Canadian Studies you find people all over campus that are Canadian or somehow associate with Canada,” Endersby said.

Gwendolyn Sams, a Political Science graduate student, became interested in Canadian Studies after researching health policy in Canada. Her interest grew after attending conferences and lectures like Canada Days.

“It got me interested, and now I’m writing a dissertation on lobbying and political scandal in Canada,” she said.

She said there aren’t many chances to learn about Québec, and that the presentation helped quantify and explore the context of the U.S.-Canada relationship.

“It’s definitely cool to see those numbers and how important of a player [Canada] really is,” she said.

Charlie Hebdo panel raises the question: Just because you can say it, should you?

Nous Sommes Tous Charlie Symposium

By Amanda Nero

The Charlie Hebdo attack was the topic of discussion at the Nous Sommes Tous Charlie symposium at MU on Jan. 3.

MU Professor Sandra Davidson talks about free speech at the Nous Sommes Charlie symposium on Jan. 3. Photo cred: Olivia Paggiarino.

The symposium opened up talks about freedom of speech, hateful speech, and speech permitted by the law. The discussion was led by a panel of MU Professor Sandra Davidson, political cartoonist and author Khalil Bendib, and director of the Ethical Journalism Network Aidan White.

Political cartoonist and author Khalil Bendib speaks at the Nous Sommes Tous Charlie symposium on Jan. 3. Photo cred: Olivia Paggiarino.

Gunmen Cherif and Said Kouachi walked into the Charlie Hebdo office and proceeded to shoot resulting in the death of 12 people on Jan. 7. The attack was in retaliation for the  cartoons about Islam that the satirical magazine previously ran.

A political cartoon from Khalil Bendib’s website displayed at the Nous Sommes Tous Charlie symposium on Jan. 3. Photo cred: Olivia Paggiarino

The track record of Charlie Hebdo publishing culturally offensive content was discussed. Both White and Bendib debated if and where the publication should have drawn the red line.

It was unanimous that acts of terror like this are always unjustifiable, but agreement on when it becomes a hate crime to publish belligerent commentaries about other groups remained gray.

By the end of the discussion all the panelists related the Charlie Hebdo story to numerous freedom of expression examples from around the world.

Read more

Related articles: Letter from the Editor

Letter from the Editor

By Co-Editor-in-Chief Niki Kottmann

Today is a bittersweet day for me.

I’m excited to write my first “Letter from the Editor (Abroad)” editorial, but it isn’t going to be the I’m-About-to-Leave-for-France-and-This-Is-Gonna-Be-Wicked-Awesome post that I was initially anticipating.

For anyone who doesn’t know, Paris and the surrounding region was the location of multiple acts of violence this week. 12 people were shot and killed in the office of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo Wednesday and a police officer in the southern Montrouge area of Paris was killed Thursday.

This morning, American media outlets reported on two hostage situations related to the Wednesday shooting. One situation was just outside of Paris in Dammartin-en-Goele where the two Charlie Hebdo shooting suspects, Said and Cherif Kouachi, were holding a printing press owner hostage in his factory. The other involved the suspect of the Thursday police officer killing, Amedy Coulibaly, who held multiple people hostage in a kosher grocery store on the eastern side of Paris.

It was confirmed late this morning that all three of the aforementioned suspects were killed by French authorities. The hostage at the printing press was freed as well as those at the grocery store, but French president Francois Hollande just announced that four people were killed in the store siege.

French authorities are now searching for Coulibaly’s alleged accomplice, Hayat Boumeddiene, who is the only remaining suspect. Police union spokesman Pascal Disant believes that she may have escaped the scene of the supermarket siege.

Now, back to my main point: On Wednesday, I’m moving to Reims, France to study abroad for the semester. Needless to say, this is a news story that I’ve been following very closely.

“Are you worried about how safe France is now?”

This is one of the many questions I’ve been asked in regards to how I’m feeling about the situation in France, and frankly, I’m not really scared. A natural first reaction to a situation like this is fear, so of course it was incredibly unsettling at first. However, especially after all they’ve done today, I have faith in the French authorities and their ability to control the situation. And honestly, I’m even more excited to get over there now than I was before these attacks happened.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m incredibly saddened by the devastation that these events have brought upon the lives of innocent people. The family and friends of these victims will never get the closure they’re probably craving because, as Jon Stewart said in his opening monologue Wednesday night, “there is no sense to be made of this.” The reason why my fear has been replaced with increased excitement is that I don’t think I’ve ever been more proud to be a journalism student, and now is such a fascinating time to be a journalism student in France.

This graphic is now the most recognizable symbol of support for the magazine post-attack.

 

Before I go on a passionate rant, I want to make one thing clear: I struggle with voicing my opinion on this topic because my feelings about Charlie Hebdo as a publication are mixed. No, I’m not a fan of the cartoons that they published with satirical renditions of the Prophet Mohammed. As a journalism student, I’m taught to treat all subjects fairly and tastefully, and many of their cartoons go against the values I’ve developed in school, both related to and not related to journalism.

However, my opinion about the content of the magazine doesn’t really matter because I believe in freedom of speech, even speech that I don’t agree with. I was born and raised on this concept, the idea that as I writer, I can record and share my opinions without living in fear of repercussion. I don’t particularly enjoy reading editorials or other pieces of writing that I would consider prejudiced or offensive, but I have to respect them because I believe that everyone’s entitled to their own opinion, and refusing to hear another’s viewpoint is elitist and ignorant.

When I saw pictures of the swarms of French demonstrators standing proud in the streets of Paris (and across the world, for that matter), pens and pencils in the air, I felt more inspired than I ever have throughout my two and a half years in journalism school. I don’t know if I would consider the staff of Charlie Hebdo journalists, but there is no doubt in my mind that they were writers, cartoonists, satirists and just plain human beings whose actions didn’t warrant murder.

What matters right now is that there’s a serious problem with not only terrorist attacks against freedom of speech, but French law that criminalizes certain kinds of speech. As Jonathan Turley wrote in the Washington Post, the French government is more of a threat than terrorists in this regard.

“…if the French want to memorialize those killed at Charlie Hebdo, they could start by rescinding their laws criminalizing speech that insults, defames or incites hatred, discrimination or violence on the basis of religion, race, ethnicity, nationality, disability, sex or sexual orientation,” Turley wrote.

Charlie Hebdo was threatened many times under these laws, and their refusal to give up is what helps me believe that freedom of speech is something worth fighting for. As France continues to impose restrictions on journalists, I’m excited to live and learn in a country that’s going through such a historical period. These attacks were horrific, but the one light at the end of the tunnel is that these events sparked a conversation that is incredibly necessary in France right now.

Just as the protestors’ sign in central Paris read, I’m not afraid. Even though I’ll be 89 miles from the site of these attacks, in the hometown of one of the suspected shooters, I’m excited to be a journalism exchange student living in a culture at a huge turning point in the history of journalism and free speech.

The Ebola outbreaks in West Africa cause a ripple effect in American media

By Jessica Karins

In wealthy countries like Spain and the United States where the Ebola virus is beginning to take hold in a handful of cases, it’s just a disease. A disease with grotesque symptoms, yes, a disease that frightens people, but nonetheless, it’s purely a medical problem.

In West Africa, where the virus claims almost all of its victims, it’s another story entirely. There, it’s one symptom of an ongoing crisis that encompasses governments’ inability to care for their citizens, infrastructures and healthcare systems that dramatically underserve populations, and a world around them that isn’t interested in helping. In Africa, Ebola is a social disease.

As the first few Western cases have emerged, there’s an almost shocking disconnect present in the way the news media covers these two types of crisis.

One article in the LA Times referred to experts trying to stop the virus from spreading in the US as “leading the fight against history’s worst outbreak of Ebola”. For context, almost all of the virus’ nearly 7500 victims died in West Africa. There has probably been more news coverage of the dog Spanish officials decided to put down in case it spread the virus than their has been of any single African person who died of Ebola. Now that Ebola is happening to us, it’s suddenly front-page news.

What is the reason for this gap in coverage? What are we missing that prevents us from seeing each individual life lost as valuable, regardless of national origin?

It’s actually a symptom too – of a deep strain of racism and xenophobia in American culture that prevents us from seeing the deaths of those in other nations, especially those that are predominantly non-white, as equal in value.

There’s nothing like fear as a motivation for journalism, and as a motivation to read the news. Something like the Ebola virus provokes the understandable and human reaction of horror that something like this could happen here. So even when we don’t feel personally imperiled, it’s easier to feel a sense of injustice when the victim is someone like us.

If we want to create change, though, we have to do better.

There are thousands of tragedies like this happening all the time, and no one to tell those stories to the people with the power to help. It’s a breakdown all the way down the line – no leaders demanding more progress on the issue, no public invested in pressuring them to, no media to inform them of what it is that’s wrong.

As journalists, we have a responsibility to the public to help them empathize with stories that are distant and unfamiliar. We can’t expect most people to seek out this information, but it needs to be made available–in the form of front-page headlines and solemn opening segments on the nine-o’clock news. When we focus on only those stories that are already easy to understand, both for ourselves and our readers, we don’t help them understand anything new. Just as importantly, though, we fail the people who could benefit the most from having their stories told.

As the first vaccine trial for Ebola begins, we all need to ask ourselves why it didn’t happen sooner, and why now is the tipping point for change. None of us, whether scientists, journalists, or citizens, are free from bias. Whether or not this crisis becomes one the world shares, now is the time to ask how many lives our failures of empathy have taken, and how many more they may put at risk.