“Tolerance in the Community”

In Spring 2004, Dr. Marie Rosenwasser and the Cultural Diversity and Student Equity Committee presented Allison Merzon and MJ Basti with the first annual President’s Diversity Grant award.  The grant was entitled, “Tolerance in the Community.”  The purpose of the grant was to offer students the opportunity to challenge their beliefs, values and boundaries in relation to acceptance and tolerance and how tolerance and acceptance influence personal and community health.

Both instructors spent the summer planning the implementation of the grant. Then at the beginning of the fall semester, students were introduced to the concepts of tolerance, acceptance prejudice and bias in their classes, Women’s Health (Merzon) and Multicultural Health (Basti.)  The concepts of tolerance, hate, and prejudice are relevant for these courses as they both meet the Diversity Requirement for graduation at Cuesta College as developed by the faculty Curriculum Committee. 

The selection of students to participate in this field trip was based on an application process that included questions as to why the students wanted to participate and what they would do with the information that they anticipated learning.  From there, 35 students from 5 sections of health were selected including one student participating in HE 8 Distance Education.  Students who were selected were asked to write a one-page paper entitled, “How have the issues of acceptance and tolerance impacted by personal and community health.”  These writings were bound and presented as a reader to the students and faculty the morning of the field trip, as a way to present and exchange student ideas and experiences.

On September 26th, 36 students and 4 faculty, Merzon, Basti, Matt Vasques and Jane Morgan, took a bus trip to the Simon Weisenthal Museum and the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. The bus trip included watching and then discussion of the video, “The Shadow of Hate,” followed by an engaging and politically timely discussion of class and power led by Matt Vasques.

The field trip attendees spent several hours at both Museums.  At the Simon Weisenthal Museum, the group was led on a tour that included graphic images of the holocaust, objects from concentration camps and other meaningful paraphernalia.  In addition, the group was taken through the actual holocaust Museum.  This included being assigned an actual person from the Holocaust that, at the end of the tour, each group would find out if they lived or died.  During the tour of the Holocaust Museum, the students were asking many questions of both one another and the faculty; questions such as “How could this have happened?  And, How does the rhetoric of violence and power compare to current political rhetoric?”  Many of the faculty and students agreed that the experience of the Simon Weisenthal Museum was a powerful and emotional one, with the expression of tears on the faces of many.

After visiting the Simon Weisenthal Museum, the group was led to the Museum of Tolerance.  The Museum of Tolerance is an interactive, technologically hip museum that uses the Internet, video and current music to teach people about the negative effects of prejudice and lack of acceptance.  Although this museum was not as emotional at the Holocaust Museum, it directly discussed many of the terms that the students were discussing in their courses.  Many of the students said that they felt the website information presented at the museum was most interesting.  This included the fact that listed on Tolerance.org website was the fact that San Luis Obispo had just received their first registered hate group, the Golden Skin Heads, whom according to Tolerance.org, “is a particularly violent element of the white supremacist movement.”   Leaving the Museum of Tolerance, the group was filled with emotions.  In fact, the bus ride home was contemplative and quiet as the students and faculty quietly reflected on their experience. 

The final written assignment tied to the grant was for the students to compose a paper discussing their experience on the field trip.  These papers, entitled, “How Visiting the Museum of Tolerance Changed My Perspective on How Tolerance and Acceptance Influenced Both My Personal and Community Health”, were again bound and given to faculty, staff, students, administrators and the Board of Trustees. 

Additionally, as part of providing a more wide spread public dissemination about the Museum trip many of the students from both Merzon and Basti’s classes were invited to speak in other faculty courses regarding their experience and about half of the students who participated in the field trip hosted a panel discussion for the general student population on December 1, 2005.  This panel discussion included showing the video “The Shadow of Hate,” and then a discussion of their experiences at the Museums. 

The knowledge and empowerment created for students through the funding of the President’s Diversity Grant was truly inspiring.  The students were able to take abstract concepts and bear witness to real life occurrences and experiences.  In turn, these students learned about themselves and shared their knowledge and experience with their peers; a true commitment to helping students understand the diversity of the others.

Submitted by Allison Merzon and MJ Basti