CIEL Voices & Visions: A Student Journal

Borders and Bridges

Editor's Introduction 2005

     "In fact, the Borderlands are physically present wherever two or more cultures edge each other, where people of different races occupy the same territory, where under, lower, middle and upper classes touch, where the space between two individuals shrinks with intimacy."

       –Gloria Anzaldua, "Preface" to her Borderlands/La Frontera:  The New Mestiza, San Francisco: Aunt          Lute Book Company, 1987.

This on-line journal brings together the words and images of students from five different colleges ( Fairhaven College, The Evergreen State College, New College, Pitzer College and Daemen College) members of the Consortium of Innovative Environments for Learning (CIEL). The pieces reflect the voices and visions of the students in these colleges: their courage to explore borders and to create bridges, to risk, to question, to dream.

These pieces also provide a small window into ways these innovating colleges attempt to work with students. Most of these pieces were created in response to a question or an assignment in a writing or printmaking class, a prompt for an external learning journal, or a project in a class addressing a theme or issue. Some were created outside of any class or formal projects as expressions of voice and vision.

As in previous years, editing this on-line journal has been both a challenge and a joy. The submissions trickled in slowly, but finally e-mail boxes filled up with remarkable work and pleas to consider them even though it was the week after the deadline.

I want to thank the CIEL campus coordinators from the participating colleges for responding to e-mails hounding them about parameters and deadlines and for gathering the pieces from their campuses. I also extend a special thanks to Danielle Woodman at Daemen College for being our web-mistress. CIEL’s thanks also go to the Fund for the Improvement for Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE) for the grant that supported the developing collaboration among and between our campuses. Finally, we want to express our gratitude to our students for sharing their voices and visions.

The Editor,

Marie Eaton
Fairhaven College, Western Washington University

CULTURE MATTERS for the kind of community and society we develop. Our society exists and changes within a constantly shifting sea of cultural influences which reflect multiple differences of race, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, physical and intellectual competence, and class, among others. The philosopher J.S. Mill argues that how well we protect and nurture different cultures and perspectives--especially those in the minority--is an important measure of our civilization. Another philosopher, John Dewey, believes that rather than fear and suppress diversity we should foster and celebrate it as a source of our community's vitality and vibrancy. For Dewey, the choice is clear: we can either allow the diverse cultures and communities that comprise the United States to develop as "separate but equal" entities--inviting an American brand of apartheid--or we can promote critical and constructive interaction among diverse cultures based on the faith that this interaction is the surest path toward democracy and pluralism.

CULTURE MATTERS for how our society shapes our individual identities. Each of us is a complex hub of countless cultural influences derived from our society. While some of society's myriad influences are mutually reinforcing, others clash and contradict. For each of us, our ability to understand our cultural identities and to negotiate the internal contradictions will shape who we become.

CULTURE MATTERS for how we learn from our past. The history of the United States is a composite of the multicultural histories of not-always-united peoples, whose differences ensured the endurance of enmity. Some immigrated voluntarily in search of various freedoms and opportunities. Others were forced here in chains of slavery and indenture. And, let us not forget, this land's native populations did not invite any of its immigrants. However we "Americans" got here, we contributed diverse economic arrangements, political practices, and cultural traditions which sometimes converged to create harmonies and at other times devolved into dissonance.

CULTURE MATTERS for how each individual actively participates in shaping society and recreating institutions. Our society and institutions are plagued by problems that have various multicultural dimensions. Our skill at applying multicultural approaches will augment our analysis of, for example, welfare reform, representations of cultures in media, affirmative action, gay/lesbian civil rights, immigration policy, education reform, and the directions of social research.

Individuals constitute communities, communities identify individuals, and together they make up our society. Our ability to read and navigate the cross-currents of our selves will affect our ability to rethink and reorganize our society. Adding to this complexity is the concatenation of multicultural conditions that push us together at the same time that they pull us apart. Can we find ways of interacting in the critical yet constructive manner that will be necessary to fulfill the promise of democracy and pluralism? This challenge engenders the primary objective of Culture Matters: to convey the great value of multiculturalism as an approach to understanding one's self, one's society, and one's role in reshaping society.