Students Attend FYE Program: Offered New Ideas and Perspectives

By Evan Rothera

On Sunday night, September 24th, the First Year Class had another installment of their First Year Experience Program. They all went to the Majestic Theater and listened to a speaker, Dr. Maura Cullen talk about diversity and other assorted topics which included but were not limited to size, gender, age, sexual orientation, race, and disability. After the program was over each of them received a coupon for a free movie at the Majestic.

The program began with a slide show of a series of different quotes; which helped to segue into Cullen’s presentation. To illustrate several of her points, Cullen used Power Point to project her topics onto a central screen. She spent the bulk of the presentation discussing the topics using a variety of anecdotes and personal experiences to help illustrate central ideas. A sampling of her strategies includes the following items.

For size, she talked about a friend who had lost 130 pounds and how she described the differences in the ways people treated her. During the gender portion, she offered various statistics about the employment of women. For age, she urged everyone to write at least one letter to a grandparent or someone else they love, because letters are very important to people. For race, she discussed an experience she had where she was the only white person in a church and asked the audience to put themselves in that scenario. In her discussion of disability she brought up the fact that people are only temporarily able bodies (TABs) because anything can happen at any point. Finally, for sexual orientation, she told the audience that she was a lesbian and described some of the problems which she has faced due to her sexual preference.

The program ended with a slide show of composed of various pictures, some of which included first year students, several were of Cullen and her father, but the majority of the pictures were of people who succeeded or people who fought against an established norm or people who faced severe repression. The show was accompanied by the song “I Believe I can Fly,” sung by R. Kelly, a man whom Cullen says made some bad choices, but should not be judged by them.

The reaction of the First Years was somewhat mixed. One person said that “I thought it was pretty good, it was better than I thought it would be.” Another person said “It was a good attempt because she had a good message, but I don’t know if one talk will change any opinions.” One student added “I think she has a lot of really good points, but towards the end of the program, her speech became more biased. Overall, it was very entertaining, but I felt embarrassed because our class was rude and I really like WAWA iced tea.” Lisa Spadaccini, the President of the First year Class said that she was originally skeptical of the program, “but after it was over, I learned a lot more about diversity. I can identify with the idea of being the only person of a specific race in one area, because it has happened to me.” One last person had an odd opinion: when asked about the program, they replied that “it made me crave Taco Bell.” So, student feelings on the program were somewhat mixed, but most agree that it offered some ideas to think about.