Day 2 of MLI

Well technically, it's the morning of Day 3 but I am already awake with excitement after yesterday.

I heard Sunday night there was a lot of consumption of communal food and playing of board games in Diversity House. Luckily, it seems like people still got time to sleep.

We kicked off the day with our Class Workshop; not an easy way to start. SRPs read aloud 8 narratives I had gathered from Haverford students throughout the 3 years I have been here. Each was a story that addressed an experience a student had with socioeconomic class on Haverford's campus. MLI students then talked about these stories and even thought of ways they themselves could be more aware of socioeconomic class. With this workshop, we have begun the emotional bag packing and unpacking. I know personally I see all feelings associated with this topic: anger, shame, guilt, confusion... But these feelings all had two sides and it was interesting to see those angry at others or angry at themselves. Guilty of their wealth instead of shameful for lack of wealth. These were important cross sections to building our MLI community.

We then moved into MLI's third workshop: privilege. A lot of what we dealt with in class came into play here and students got to experience a great, but sometimes rather difficult, exercise called "Crossing the Line." Students were read statements about privilege and got to physically process these by moving away from the initial line they started at. Almost all students were surprised by things they did not know were privileges or at how their privilege is relative.

After a nice lunch of grilled cheese courtesy of our amazing Dining Center staff, we had our last workshop of the day which regarded race, heritage, culture and ethnicity. Students explored these definitions and what their own ethnic groups meant to them. Haverford is a rather diverse school and it was important to have a difficult conversation like this before the entire community moves in. It was enriching to hear students own stories about their heritage and also eye opening to hear about student's own ethnic communities.

I look forward to our topics today: Gender, Sexuality and Leadership. I was a Gender Studies major and always enjoy this topic as most students have had little experience with talking about precarious subjects like gender and sexual orientation. Leadership is our last workshop as it answers the question "now what?" Students get to think about what they will do with all this knowledge and shared experience and how this will translate to the burgeoning leadership opportunities at Haverford.

-Julia