Boxes and Walls immersed students in struggles faced by international students on Taylor’s campus.
From 12:00 p.m. to 4 p.m. on March 15, the Multicultural Student Association (MSA) transformed the second floor of Reade Liberal Arts Center into a series of seven rooms, each set up to highlight specific experiences of Taylor’s international students.
Six organizations in the Office of Intercultural Programs, including the Asian Students’ Intercultural Association (ASIA), Black Student Union (BSU), International Student Society (ISS), Latino Student Union (LSU), Middle East Collegiate Association (MECA) and MuKappa were given rooms to share an experience students within their organization face. The final room was the reflection room, where students could talk and pray about what they experienced.
“The direct meaning of Boxes and Walls is thinking outside of the box and throwing down any sort of wall of stereotype that you have,” MSA co-president Rhoda Belachew, a junior politics, philosophy and economics major said. “Boxes and Walls is a serious event, but also we kind of want to make it comfortable for people and students to come and just learn about struggles and experiences of students.”
Learning does not have to be done in a completely serious atmosphere, Belachew said. It can be done in a fun context. Some of the rooms were designed with games to help students learn.
MuKappa, a fellowship created for students of missionary families and third culture backgrounds, put together a foreign market and gave visitors a shopping list of items to find within a time limit. The vendors spoke different languages, simulating an experience of some third culture and missionary kids, where they are in unfamiliar environments where they may not understand the languages.
Other organizations illustrated their struggles in other ways.
LSU set up a café in which each attendee was labeled behind their back and members would interact with attendees in a prejudiced manner based on the descriptors on their label. The labels denoted ethnicities and physical attributes such as skin color. The experience encapsulated judgments they face based on their ethnicity and appearance.
“We are engaging with and recognizing that there are challenges and struggles that we experience,” Nate Chu, director of international student programs said. “A lot of times these challenges exist because we as a society have not recognized the worth of others. And so how do we remember that we're each created in God's image? And then, because of our failings, how do we live out our calling to restore relationships, to reconcile through this process?”
Boxes and Walls is a way of addressing those challenges by highlighting some of the struggles and then reflecting and praying, Chu said.
The reflection room was important to provide space for questions and offer a judgment-free zone to process, MSA co-president Angelica Felix, junior music education major said.
“The impact of the event, I think…is the reflection room,” Felix said. “Just being able to talk about what you've just seen, and being able to digest it properly, and not just leaving (after) being thrown a ton of information.”
Boxes and Walls is MSA’s most hard hitting event, Felix said. However, it ultimately works toward the purpose of understanding others better.
Days get busy and people get caught up in day to day life, Belachew said. It can be easy to forget that actions and words affect people.
“It's just a great way for the Taylor student community…to be able to learn more about their community, and learn more about different cultures and learn more about God's people,” Belachew said. “Our actions can really affect people, and so being able to understand the history and experiences that people have can help us get just a little bit of wisdom of how to live together in a godly way.”
