Final Project: A Look into the Diversity of the University of Oklahoma

Below is a video of the celebration of Asian cultures on November 12, 2009 in Oklahoma Memorial Union of the University of Oklahoma:



Here are some photos of the participants of Asian Oklahoma Night:

The emcees of Asian Oklahoma Night were Nghia Pham, biochemistry senior, and Luanne Vo, zoology senior. These emcees changed wardrobes throughout the night according to the performances.-Photo by Chinh Doan

Priya Patel, College of Arts and Sciences sophomore, and Komal Patel, University College sophomore, performed in the Bollywood dance. The dance included a collection of Bollywood songs from various movies starring the famous Indian actress Madhuri Dixit. -Photo by Chinh Doan

Mamisha Thapa, microbiology sophomore, participated in the Nepali performance. The harmony consisted of folk music from Pahadi mixed with contemporary Nepali tunes.-Photo by Chinh Doan

"University of Oklahoma Community Enlarges Personal World"

According to the Institutional Research and Reporting Web site, the number of Asian international students has decreased at the University of Oklahoma. There were 1,293 international students from Asia out of the total number of 1,718 international students in 1995. In 2008, there were 728 out of 1,429. The rate of international students from Asia has dropped from 78 percent to 50 percent in 13 years.

The number of members of the Vietnamese Student Association (VSA) has also decreased from last year’s 66 to this year’s 55. The president of VSA, Quyen Nguyen, psychology sophomore, believes that the reduction in VSA membership may be tied to the decrease in Asian international students.

However, the number of OU students of Asian descent have increased each year, and almost tripled in 20 years. According to the Institutional Research and Reporting Web site, 468 students of Asian descent were enrolled In 1988; 1,040 in 1998; and 1,202 in 2008.

With the fluctuating number of students of Asian descent, what is the University of Oklahoma doing to encourage cultural diversity? Students are joining multicultural organizations, faculty are researching and developing institutions that promote diversity in each college and professors are bringing up the subject of diversity in the classrooms. The OU community is continuing to connect diversity, its issues and core values more and more.

President and Mrs. David Boren created the OU Cousins program in 1996 as a way of "developing understanding, friendship and unity among U.S., International and exchange students at the University of Oklahoma."

Each international student is matched with one or two American students and invited to participate in monthly programs that are free of charge. Students are encouraged to share their respective cultures with one another.

"We feel that we have gotten better in our quality of matches this year. We have noticed that there are a lot more Cousin pairs that come to our events and they will bring more of their friends," said Quy Nguyen, OU Cousins staff advisor.

This year, there are 46 countries represented in the program. There are approximately 600 American participants and 350 international participants.

According to Nguyen, OU Cousins has consistently been growing since its inception, and it has the largest membership in history this year.

"I think that more and more students, both American and international, are realizing how the world is becoming so global and how we are all so connected, and because of this they are eager to learn more about other cultures," said Nguyen.

There are new multicultural Greek councils this year: one multicultural fraternity, Gamma Beta, and one multicultural sorority, Lambda Delta Psi.

Olymp Nola, international area studies junior, is one of the founders of Gamma Beta. He said he decided to create an establishment where people are allowed more options in the multicultural Greek community.

"I believed that the idea of having an Asian-American fraternity should be just that, Asian-American, so that it may be expanded beyond the brotherhood and into the community so they can see what it's like," Nola said.

Nola said the diversity of the campus has changed since he first attended OU because he has began to notice more cultural interactions.

Institutions such as the Oklahoma Institute for Diversity in Journalism (OIDJ) offers an annual workshop for high school students with the goal of exposing them to the world of journalism.

"I thought it was an extremely important program that would add to the diversity of the student body within the Gaylord College," said Ray Chavez.

Chavez taught at the University of South Dakota before coming to OU. He is also the director of OIDJ and he said that the program was one of the reasons he decided to teach at OU.

"It has quite a mix of different cultures," said Chavez. "There's more Asians here in Oklahoma than in South Dakota, more African Americans here so it provides a pretty good mix when we try to recruit for OIDJ."

According its mission statement, OIDJ’s mission is to provide opportunities for students who would otherwise lack access to journalism training or who face other barriers to pursuing careers in journalism.

Members of the OU community are becoming more aware of the importance of cultural diversity. Although the awareness in cultural diversity may be slow at times, many are embracing the opportunities to enlarge their personal world. Some, such as the above mentioned, have taken initiative by developing organizations, programs and institutions aimed at showing others the need for the continuation of change for the positive.

Links:

Institutional Research and Reporting:
http://www.ou.edu/provost/ir/

Oklahoma Institute for Diversity in Journalism:
http://www.ou.edu/gaylord/home/main/outreach/oidj.html

University of Oklahoma Asian American student life:
http://studentlife.ou.edu/content/view/5/6/

http://studentlife.ou.edu/component/option.com_studorg/

List of multicultural organizations at OU:
http://www.ou.edu/go2/home/diversity/multicultural_student.html

Asian American Student Association (AASA):
http://ouaasa.wordpress.com/

Filipino American Student Association (FASA):
http://www.ou.edu/student/fasa/

Vietnamese Student Association (VSA):
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2219008070

Multicultural Engineering Program (MEP):
http://www.ou.edu/coe/wssc/audience/mep_diversity/mep.html

OU Cousins:
http://oucousins.ou.edu/

Ray Chavez, Gaylord College professor, tells us how the diversity of the University of Oklahoma has changed since he has been here the past six years. He also tells us about what the Gaylord College has done to encourage more unity and participation in cultural organizations and what the students and faculty can do to boost the diversity.

Quotes by faculty about diversity at the University of Oklahoma:

"The celebration of diversity is one of our very dearly held core values. Our sense of community is enriched by the collective cultural differences and backgrounds of the individuals we bring to this campus. We recognize that the diversity of those individuals provides a greater perspective and a more complete experience for all of us." - Joe Castiglione, Director of Athletics


"Only in a setting where people are cognizant of issues of diversity and conscientious about making social change through educational equity may leaders hope to concretely change the perpetuation of the inequities in higher education and society." - Penny Pasque, Assistant Professor, Adult & Higher Education

"One of the greatest needs we have in this country, as we enter a new world environment, is to internationalize the thinking of the next generation of Americans. How in the world are we going to go out and compete economically, how are going to be politically involved if we don’t speak the languages of the world, if we don’t understand the cultures of the world? How in the world are we going to be ready to go out into a new international environment and hold our own when the next generation of Americans doesn’t seem to have an understanding that it’s an international environment in which they’re going to be living and competing? We must change." - David L .Boren, President of the University of Oklahoma

First Integrity Forum

The University of Oklahoma Student Association (UOSA) Honor Council hosted its first-ever integrity forum Friday afternoon in Nielsen Hall. The forum featured a panel of six professionals in business, higher education, petroleum engineering, politics, religion, and law. The idea was to show students that ethics is something that's important not just during college but also for their whole lives.

"This event represents one of the many steps the University of Oklahoma is taking into spotlight on academic integrity in the university community," said Breea Bacon, co-advisor to Honor Council and assistant director of Academic Integrity Systems.

The directors and Honor Council members said they felt the need to host a forum like this because it has never been done. They believe that educating the community and showcasing successful professionals who have integrity is the best way to prevent academic misconduct.

"You will study your own profession's ethics, but it's not very often that we have a panel of folks from a variety of different professions to talk about what's different and what's the same in their respective fields," said Gregory Heiser, director of Academic Integrity Systems. Heiser is also co-advisor to the Honor Council and associate provost.

Hannah Morris, a political science sophomore, said it was helpful in reaffirming the idea that one has to have integrity in order to be successful and in order to be a good contributor to society.

According to its website, the purpose of the Honor Council is to affirm the academic integrity of the students, aspire to an environment of integrity created and upheld by the actions and values of students, recognize the urgency of a commitment to the highest standards of Academic Integrity and to resolve to make academic integrity a source of pride for the students.

The responsibility of the Honor Council members is to educate students about academic integrity, review academic misconduct cases and participate in academic misconduct hearings. The council is also a chapter of the Oklahoma Business Ethics Consortium.

Although the Honor Council will change its name to the Integrity Council In the spring of 2010 due to previous confusion with the Honors College, its function will remain the same.

More information on the Honor Council can be found at www.ou.edu/honorcouncil.

Final Project Idea

My idea for the final project is to attend the Asian Oklahoma Night in the Molly Shi Ballroom, record the event and edit the clips into a video. The video would last about three minutes. I would interview a minimum of three sources and use their answers to explain what Asian Oklahoma Night is and how it is being used to inform people of the need to continue the push toward a more diverse and connected community. In my text story, I would mainly write about Asian Oklahoma Night, but I would also add details about the diversity of our campus and what the multicultural organizations such as the Asian American Student Association (the host of Asian Oklahoma Night) are doing to encouragement more student involvement.

Wide, Medium and Tight Shots

I practiced capturing wide, medium and tight shots of the cleaning of the courtyard of Delta Delta Delta.

Video by Chinh Doan

Homecoming Sidewalk Chalk Competition 2009

Mid-Term Project: Vietnamese Student Association Lunar Moon Festival 2009

The University of Oklahoma Vietnamese Student Association (VSA) hosted its annual Lunar Moon Festival Sept. 26 in the Molly Shi Ballroom. VSA was able to showcase the talents of the Vietnamese-American students while educating the campus about their Vietnamese heritage with the monetary help of University of Oklahoma Student Association, use of technical equipment from Union Programming Board and dedication of many volunteers.

The Moon Festival, dated as far back as the first century, is usually celebrated in September or early October. Just like Christmas and Thanksgiving in the United States, the Moon Festival is one of the most important holidays in Asia.

“The purpose of having this at OU is definitely to increase Asian awareness about the events that the Vietnamese culture has,” said Yvonne Lai, pre-med junior.

There are many legends as to how the Moon Festival got its start. One of the most popular is the one about an archer and his wife. The earth once had ten suns circling it and scorching it with their heat. A strong archer, Hou Yi, saved the earth by shooting down nine of the suns. One day, Hou Yi stole the elixir of life from a goddess, but his wife, Chang Er, drank the elixir. After drinking it, she floated to the moon. Because Hou Yi loved his wife so much, he didn't shoot down the moon in fear of missing his shot and hurting her. Ever since then, they are allowed to see each other only once a year when the moon is at its fullest, the day of the Moon Festival.

During this celebration families gather to listen to legendary tales, look at the moon and eat traditional foods such as moon cakes. Moon cakes are filled with lotus seed paste, red bean paste or black bean paste with a hard-boiled salty yolk in the middle, representing the full moon. Making lanterns, burning incense and watching lion dances are other traditional Moon Festival activities.

VSA's new advisor and OU alum, Jennifer Nguyen, remembers attending the Moon Festival when she was in college. She is thankful she now has the opportunity to help VSA, especially with the Moon Festival.

Because the Moon Festival is rooted deeply in traditions, these Vietnamese Americans said they wanted their peers and the OU community to know what this festival is about and what it means to them.

“I think it’s really good to have different cultures come out to see the show so they know what we’re all about, why we celebrate Lunar Moon Festival, and just to increase Asian Awareness,” said Lai.

Before the two-hour show of singing, acting, dancing and even runway walking, participants had the opportunity to browse through the many booths set up in the ballroom. Participants were also able to learn more about the Vietnamese culture, buy arts and crafts and t-shirts, make a wish on a lantern and enter in a lantern-making contest.

“We wanted Vietnamese students, especially the international students to have a home away from home,” said sophomore, Quyen Nguyen. “This way they have their traditional celebrations in their new home.”

The lion dancing group of St. Andrew Dung Lac church opened the show with loud drums and cymbals and extravagant costumes as they moved throughout the ballroom interacting with attendees.

Next, freshman VSA representative, Paulinna Nguyen, sang the national anthem. Then, VSA president, Quyen Nguyen, and vice-president, Helen Vu, welcomed attendees as volunteers played traditional Vietnamese music on the piano.

The ladies of Phi Delta Alpha along with other VSA members performed a play using dancing, acting and improvising to remind and educate the attendees of the legend of the Moon Festival.

Master and mistress of ceremony, both seniors, Danny Mach and Dee Dee Ho quizzed the audience to make sure everyone was paying attention. They asked questions about the skit and Vietnamese traditions. Correct answers earned prizes such as Vietnamese snacks, VSA t-shirts and gift baskets.

Next, Yvonne Lai sang “Dreaming of You” in both Vietnamese and English. VSA officers followed with an original dance involving ribbon-twirling to the Vietnamese song “Cau Chuyen Tinh Toi.”

It was then time to reveal the winners in the lantern competition hosted by the men of Lambda Phi Epsilon. Contestants had the opportunity to get on stage to showcase his or her lantern and explain why he or she chose to build that particular lantern.

The longest-lasting event of the night, the fashion show, lasted about 15 minutes. The women of Alpha Kappa Delta Phi and other VSA members practiced long hours for the showcasing of modern men attire and traditional Vietnamese dresses. The models walked the runway to modern Vietnamese pop music.

Tram Anh Lai was the last act of the show. She played the piano while singing “Anh Trang Le Loi” in a traditional Vietnamese dress. This love song tells the story of a lover waiting for her significant other to return when the moon is full. Not only was the moon full the night of the Moon Festival, but the ballroom was also full of participants and attendees.

Members of VSA were thrilled with the high attendance, and volunteers said they learned about their culture while educating others. They are excited to apply what they have learned to next year’s festival.

To wrap up the festivities, the VSA advisor expressed her gratitude for both the dedication of the volunteers and enthusiasm of the guests. She also invited everyone to join her in celebrating another successful Moon Festival at Pad Thai after the show.

“I’d like to thank the audience for coming out and embracing our culture,” said Nguyen. “You all are the reason these students do what they do.”

http://gcj.ou.edu/JMC3003-Vieth/Doan/soundslider.swf