Multicultural Affairs
Putnam University Center
Willamette University
900 State Street
Salem, Oregon 97301
503-370-6265 voice
OMA in the News
After the celebration, the real work continues
Emily Drew, Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies writes in an opionion piece on OregonLive.com:
The election of Sen. Barack Obama into the presidency marks something that has been impossible up until this time for African Americans, and other racial minorities. Like many of my family and friends, I spent election night celebrating. And now I am faced with a more sobering reality. Our country's race problem has not gone away. Read More...
Scholarship Sends Student to Germany
Diana Serrano ’10 first lived in Germany for a year during high school, an opportunity she sought simply as a way to spend some time outside her small hometown. The small-town escape soon became a passion as she fell in love with the country, its people and its language. Read More...
A New Generation of Activism
Stephen Lewis, who recently completed a term as the United Nations special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, didn’t mince words when he addressed Willamette’s new students at convocation in August. His plea to the students was urgent: You, the next generation of potential activists, can do something about these problems. Will Nevius ’09 was in the audience that day, but these weren’t new ideas to him.
Read More...
The Art of Understanding
When a woman from the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw dons a cap made of dentalium shells and feathers, she is honoring the coastal tribes’ tradition of covering the head in white to mimic the bald eagle. The regalia items Oregon tribes use in their private ceremonies are as important as the celebrations themselves. To share their traditions and artistic processes, all nine of Oregon’s federally recognized tribes loaned regalia — some from their personal family collections — to an exhibition at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art, The Art of Ceremony. These pieces are not what the public is used to seeing at powwows, says Dobkins, who curated the exhibition. Read More...
From Salem to D.C.: Fellowship Furthers Student's Policy Work
Collin Siu’s whirlwind of jobs during college, researching and influencing public policy, are enough to make most people’s heads spin. But Siu ’08 sees his work as a natural extension of his ultimate goal in life: leaving his community better than he found it. Read More...
Former Marine Takes Kemper Scholarship
Marco Fiallo ’11, who just landed a prestigious Kemper Scholarship, came to Willamette by way of the United States Marines Corp. “The Marines broadened my world,” he says. A member of a Marine aviation squadron, Fiallo traveled to ports in Asia, the Middle East, Australia, South America and Hawaii. Now the international studies student is hoping that Willamette will broaden his intellectual horizons, giving him a context to better understand the global cultures he experienced firsthand. Read More...
Angels Along the Way
Olympia Vernon didn’t always have a title, a Pulitzer nomination, a novel on The New York Times Editor’s Choice list, or as many awards as her years. Her beginnings were much more humble. Born on the edge of Louisiana, the fourth child of seven, she wrote her first words in the dirt. She would stretch out on her belly by a garden “held together by stones from the river.” Read More...
Coming Home the Long Way 'Round
He wore an embroidered barong shirt. She wore a lacy gown over the moose-hide slippers her grandma had sewn. His Filipino relatives cooked up a feast of pancit and caldereta, and her family read an Apache wedding song and performed the ceremony that joined their Athabaskan heritage with Filipino culture. Margaret Hoffman ’03 found her first boyfriend in eighth grade, when “E.J.” David moved to Barrow, Alaska, from the Philippines... Their honeymoon this summer was as adventurous as their courtship. Read More...
Welcoming a New Class
Megan Horning attended high school in Page, Ariz., on the northern border of the Navajo reservation, and 80 to 90 percent of her classmates were Navajo. So it seemed a little strange when she tried to join her school’s Navajo Language Club and found she was the only member... Read More...
Compassion 101
For the last two years, students with Willamette’s Take a Break program restored homes in Louisiana during Christmas break. So moved by the plight of the people she met there, Lindsey Mizell ‘08 returned to New Orleans for a year of volunteer service. Below are abridged excerpts of emails she sent home. Read More...
Willamette University Students Fill a Mentoring Gap
Bush Elementary School and Willamette University are neighbors.
And like a good neighbor, Willamette University students have stepped up to help their little neighbors to the east.
Bush has been losing federal funding each year as enrollment has dropped.
Read More...
Willamette University's 18th Annual Lu'au
Article from The Statesman Journal:
Luau at Willamette offers taste of the islands
Willamette University's Fifth Annual Powwow
Articles from The Statesman Journal:
Annual Social Powwow is Saturday
Fifth annual powwow about tradition, prayer
Powwow brings past to present
Art Bound by History
Many of her paintings are dominated by muted grays, blues and browns & calm scenes of buildings and the endless skies above them. Often they show people bracing against their surroundings or carrying out their day's work; many portray a mother and child huddling together, bringing a bit of color to an otherwise monochrome landscape.Read More...
Willamette students get personal with pledge in honor of Dr. King
Willamette University students wrote their own pledges to adhere to the common belief that all people are valued. Volunteers handed students small beige cards saying, "From this day forward, I will make a personal pledge to:"Read More...
College Students Push For Social Justice
An impromptu rally with a social-awareness tone sent some Willamette University students on a boycott of classes Thursday. A group of about 50 students with the designation "Concerned Students for Social Justice" met in the university center's commons, the Cat Cavern, Wednesday night. After the meeting spilled into early Thursday, the boycott was at hand.Read More...