Month: February 2017

I’ve made it! I’m in the land down under!

The first week has been rough. I was consumed by homesickness, and had very little motivation to go out, meet people, and get settled in. I enjoyed spending time alone, and did not contact my friends and family back home, except to tell them that I had arrived safely. My suitcase was open, and my clothes were spilling out of it, but I didn’t have hangers to put them up in my closet. I didn’t even really want to put away my suitcase, or move it so that it wasn’t as obtrusive because seeing it on the ground reminded me that this was only temporary. My room was sparse, and I had brought three photographs with me from home, but they didn’t seem to be enough. I was miserable.

What changed? Well, nothing really. I went to Ikea and bought hangers, so I had no excuse to keep my suitcase lying around. I hung up my clothes. Our residence hall had a Valentine exchange on Valentine’s Day, and I gave and received plenty of Valentines with the people I had met. I decorated my room. I bought bowls and plates and silverware, and arranged my skincare products up on a shelf. I flipped through the pamphlets I had received upon arrival, and reached out to organizations that caught my interest. I talked to people at the mandatory resident information sessions, and agreed to go on a trip with a bunch of the other exchange students.

What I’m trying to say is that there wasn’t one moment where I decided to shed my homesickness and embrace Australian life. It was a series of small actions, prompted mostly by practicality, that helped me become accustomed to life as an exchange student. Meeting people and making friends is important to transitioning into Australian student life, but it can be hard to do when you really don’t want to leave your bed and are questioning your choice to voyage across the globe and start fresh. If the latter situation is where you’re at the first few days, know that you’re not alone. It’s okay to wallow a little bit, and sit out on some of the social activities those first few days. No one remembers anyone’s name in the first week anyway. Explore the area a little bit on your own, and start making steps towards making your room more homely. Talk to people around you. The new-ness will fade eventually, and you’ll start feeling more comfortable. You just have to wait it out.

In response to the actions of the Trump administration in its first month in office, the College of International Studies put on a series of panel speaker sessions to address various facets of the recent attacks on democracy. The speech that had the most impact on me was Dr. Velazquez’s commentary on the way many communities have faced these kinds of attacks before. From the forced internment of Japanese Americans, to the forced sterilization of 30% (!!!) of Puerto Rican women by 1970, to the treatment of immigrants today, American democracy has not always been distributed evenly and ignore that would be to whitewash and rewrite history.
My task going into the forum on democracy was to find a link to terrorism so I wanted to post my comments on that while I talk about the forum here:

During the forum on democracy, there was a lot of talk about the suppression of truth and the resulting limitations on liberty, democracy and freedom. From demonizing the media to demonizing the “academic elites,” it is clear access to information is changing in the Trump era and the ability of citizens to advocate and hold their government accountable seems to be shifting as well. While there were many other very important points made during the forum, this point is where I saw the most direct link to terrorism.
Suppression of liberty, both by governments and institutions, has been shown to correlate highly with rates of terrorism (Krieger Meierrieks 2011). When people feel they do not have power to affect their government, they become increasingly desperate and may turn to extremism. While I don’t think anyone is arguing the U.S. is going to become a hotbed for terrorism under Trump, I do think it is very important to realize the path we are going on and the potentially dangerous and destructive consequences of that. By normalizing sexism, suppression of the media, and denial of truth, we are eroding the democracy that allows us each to maintain agency and power within our government, which may lead to increased desperation within the American public. Additionally, the destabilization of global order caused by the changes Trump and other populist leaders are making may have a similar effect.
Overall, while the forum was not in any way an uplifting or encouraging experience, it was a necessary dialogue that all Americans should be thinking carefully about.

Krieger, Tim, and Daniel Meierrieks. “What Causes Terrorism?” Public Choice147.1 (2011): n. pag. Springer. Web. 23 Feb. 2017.

On my train from Austria this weekend, I had three different Europeans bring up the subject of Donald Trump’s presidency to me.
One was hesitant to ask me, afraid to offend me. One outright attacked me, assuming that each American had voted the same as the electoral college. And finally, an older man asked me what my generation thought of our country’s chosen leader and his blatant intolerance (those were his exact words).
Each European, whose memory of facism is much clearer and more recent than our own, shook their heads at our country’s current situation.
I listened to a pair of German teenagers who told us that four Pakistani refugees were pulled from their train car in the night for not having appropriate papers at the Austrian border.
I observed the troops and the military border police walking in and out of various train stations and shining flashlights in our cars in the middle of the night.
I never once had my passport checked. I never once had my status questioned. When the border patrol shone their lights in our car, they didn’t even open the door. I am so, so thankful for the fact that I am an American today and every day and for the safeties it affords me.
But today, I read that the Trump administration wants to repeal DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) that allows children whose parents migrated from other countries to the states to apply for work permits and defer deportation for two years (I know, the time difference makes me slow to the news). My heart sank. Because I’m studying refugeeism here in Europe and I know the heartbreak it brings and I cannot imagine being pulled off a train in the middle of the night and sent back to a place that I can no longer call home. And it makes me sick to think that our country, the place of endless opportunity, is turning away those who have none. It makes the rest of the world sick, apparently, too.