Freshmen class links up new perspectives

By Frank Ruggiero

Sometimes the greatest educator is experience.

Jasmine ShoShanna sought to prove this point to her Appalachian State University freshman seminar class, and her students’ final grades will serve as the deciding factor.

ShoShanna’s class of 24 was linked with Dr. Gregory Reck’s introductory anthropology course, in that all 24 were all freshmen enrolled in that course.

“What we decided to do this year for our project was have the students work at doing what an anthropologist does, which is basically seeing the world through someone else’s eyes,” ShoShanna said. “And that’s no small feat. You have to listen, and it’s not about putting in your own opinion or value system. It’s about listening and asking questions.”

ShoShanna said she’d noticed how people tend to live their lives adhering to only their belief system. With students, many enter college with the same views their parents have. While there’s nothing wrong with this, ShoShanna continued, “in order for a value system to be truly yours, you have to question it.

“So, in seeing the world through someone else’s eyes who’s different than you, that can be a way of questioning your value system and seeing the world in a whole new way.”

ShoShanna thinks this, perhaps, could be the basis of education and life. As such, she and Reck applied this notion to their students. For the freshman seminar’s class major project, ShoShanna distributed index cards and asked students to write down the three people they’d be least likely to ever have lunch with.

Among the pool of the students’ “undesirable” lunch partners were a right-wing Christian, a peace activist, an “Appalachian mountain person,” a hippy, a cop, and a maintenance worker, to name a few. In turn, ShoShanna matched up the students with the entry on their index card that seemed to be their polar opposite. The idea would be for students to interview the person, then go to work with them to see the world from their point of view.

An active community member, ShoShanna used her various connections in town to pair students with their respective foils. For instance, she said two very liberal students had to interview a conservative Christian.

Jason Pearson, a mathematics major from New Orleans, La., and Joey Scott, an art major from West Jefferson, interviewed Doyle Ward, Sugar Grove postmaster and Christian.

“For this project...we spent some time with someone that had a different background and beliefs from us — Mr. Doyle Ward, someone who’s considered a conservative Christian who has different beliefs than my own,” Pearson said. “We went to Mr. Ward’s church in Bethel, a Baptist denomination, great community-based church and a very nice service, and then we went to a Chinese restaurant for the interview.”

From his time spent with Ward, Pearson said he learned that stereotypes do not meet accurate perceptions. Scott agreed with Pearson, saying he learned that many conservative Christians are “very open-minded.”

The two enjoyed the time spent with Ward, and Ward enjoyed the time spent with them, even dispelling a stereotype of his own.

“I guess I had predisposed in my mind that when they’d encounter my answers to the questions that they might roll their eyes,” Ward said. “But they didn’t. I saw they were really thinking it through. And so, to a big degree, I think I was as impressed with them as they might have been with me.”

Dinah Wilgus, a French education major from Davidson, wrote down “very high-end CEO businesswoman sort of type” and was paired with Loretta Clawson, mayor-elect and mayor pro tem of Boone.

Clawson told Wilgus of her involvement in local government and Wilgus learned there was more to Boone than meets the eye. She learned about steep slope development, greenspace and even attended a town council meeting.

“That was really neat because a lot of people were bringing up other issues I’d never heard about,” Wilgus said. “There were some students at the council meeting, but there were a lot of other townspeople I was sitting around, and they were just so into it.

“I didn’t realize that Boone was so packed and that there was so little building space. I didn’t realize that we were starting to build on the sides of mountains. I always thought of Boone as more of...the Boonies. It was good to know that someone was trying to take a stand in that sort of mentality.”

Wilgus had a difficult time getting in touch with Clawson, who keeps a busy schedule. When they finally met and talked over lunch, Wilgus’s anxiety was put to rest. After learning of the town’s inner workings, Wilgus said she now feels more like a resident of Boone than just a college student, and Clawson couldn’t have been happier.

“I love to meet with students,” she said. “Any time a student wants to meet with me, I’m there to meet and discuss the issues, because the ASU students are such a big part of the town.”

Krystal Hale, a double major in child development and psychology from Maiden, wrote “police officer” on her card, as she said she’d had many “bad run-ins” with the police in high school. ShoShanna had difficulty convincing a reluctant Hale to proceed with the interview.

“I had to stress that he’s a human being just like her,” ShoShanna said. “Finally, they connected, and after the interview she was just beaming.”

Hale was paired with Sgt. Jeff Rucker of the Boone Police Department, and the two quickly became, as both of them said, “new lifelong friends” — an unexpected result for Hale.

“I had bad experiences with cops a couple years ago,” she said. “A friend of mine died, a 16-year-old that died in the juvenile detention center in Raleigh, and I’ve had my car illegally searched a million times in Catawba County.”

After meeting with Rucker, she learned that Jeff, as she now calls him, “is an awesome cop, and it makes me feel a lot better to have people like him on our police force.”

Hale said she learned that “not all cops are bad, and that you should get to know people before you stereotype them.” As ShoShanna said, Hale was intimidated coming into the interview, but Rucker’s sense of humor and down-to-earth attitude quickly put her at ease.

“Now I have a new friend on the Boone Police Department,” Hale said.

Rucker, who has served with the Boone PD for 22 years, worked 14 years in youth investigations. He hoped the outcome of the project would be good, and said he “wasn’t going to paint any other picture,” but present himself in a realistic manner.

After the interview, Rucker took Hale on a ride-along, where the two went on numerous calls.

“She got to see the victims’ side of it, that sometimes things do happen when there’s a victim of the crime,” Rucker said, telling how Hale saw people deal with a personal loss or loss of property. “Hopefully, she got to see not only intervention, but prevention.”

Rucker called the project a “bridge-building experience,” which allowed Hale to see behind the badge. Rucker himself attended Appalachian State, and knows that college life can be tough, sometimes like police work.

“But we go home as an officer, take off the uniform and put on our flannel shirt and blue jeans and function just like everyone else,” he said. “I think that was a wonderful part of the program, because it allowed her to see me in a different set of clothes. We sat down and had coffee...and got to talking normal stuff. We talked about our families, and she knows all about my life and I know a little about hers.

“We took it one step further and really got to know each other. She put the caps on it when she said she has a lifelong friend now, and I said that’s the same for me. Life’s about building bridges.”

The experience served as only part of the students’ grades, while organization of a pot-luck dinner with all those interviewed invited was the other.

Reck told the crowd how the project reminded him of a statement from a French philosopher, who said that cultural anthropology is not really defined by a distinct subject matter, but a way of thinking about the world. Make the difference your own, and make your own difference, he said.

Reck told how the world is full of “people radically different than ourselves...but we’re all human beings.” Cultural anthropology, he continued, is about understanding and relating to people different than ourselves — like looking into a mirror and getting a better reflection of our own selves and humanity.

• Frank Ruggiero may be contacted at ruggiero@wataugademocrat.com.