By
Jeremy Duda
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Leadership programs send participants to learn about different cultures
Students in leadership programs at the UA learned a lesson in diversity and respect for different people at a workshop yesterday.
The workshop, sponsored by the Arizona Collegiate Institute for Leadership, was titled "Oppression and Family Religion: What Gets Taught and Caught." The focus was on attitudes about other cultures and people and how these outlooks are formed by children.
Rachel Wagner, hall director for Graham-Greenlee and Hopi Lodge residence halls, hosted the workshop, held in the Economics building. With an emphasis on explanation through story-telling, she described family religion as "how you see the world based on how you were raised."
In one story she told, a child in a shopping mall pointed out to his mother a man in a wheelchair - something he had never seen before. His mother, concerned about the embarrassment it might cause, promptly quieted the child and hurried them away.
"What does this teach him?" Wagner asked the group rhetorically. "That we don't talk about it."
The workshop's attendees, which consisted of about 15 people, broke down into smaller groups to discuss things such as the first time they noticed someone who was different from them.
"I liked how everyone got together and spoke about individual things and then related them to a single theme," said Jason Anzalone, a finance sophomore who attended the workshop.
The tales the students heard and told were meant to make people more aware of the attitudes they hold about people of other races, sexes and cultural backgrounds, Wagner said.
The workshop was part of a series organized by the Arizona Collegiate Institute for Leadership for its leadership enrichment program. Students who are members of co-collegiate programs such as the Blue Chip leadership program or the Omicron Delta Kappa National Leadership Honor Society must attend six such workshops to be certified in the enrichment program.
"The more of them you go to, the more you realize that you're learning indirect leadership," said Anzalone, a Blue Chip member.
Attendance yesterday was required for members of the two-year-old University of Arizona Blue Chip program, which is sponsored by the Arizona Collegiate Institute for Leadership.
