Journal #8 Tunnel Review

I will complete a video series of seven international students interviewing them about debunking common stereotypes of their culture and hostility felt towards them for being Muslim. I will interview seven American students of different races and ethnicities about their perceptions of the Muslim students. I will compare their perceptions of Americans and American perceptions of them. Then I will write student spotlight interviews to feature in the Tor Echo. The videos will be edited and put in a podcast and published on the Alfred State website under the international education page.

My pre-event was a webinar sponsored by the Islamic Network Group in California. The webinar was titled “Getting to Know Muslims and Their Faith.” The Islamic Network Group (ING) is a non-profit organization whose mission is to debunk and counter prejudice and discrimination against American Muslims by teaching about their traditions and contributions in the context of America’s history and cultural diversity. The organization was founded in 1993 and they achieve their mission through education and community engagement. They provide presentations, training seminars, workshops, and panel discussions hosted by volunteers around the United States.

For the actual Tunnel I ended up interviewing five international students that were Muslim. Not all of the students will be used in the video series because of the time limit of the Tunnel room. Some of the interviews were not of good quality, complicated and difficult to comprehend. The international students that were interviewed were Aedh Albaqami, Mesfer Alghamdi, Mohammed S Almalki, Saraf Sampritee, and Turki M Matleg. Of the interviewees, three were American students and one student of the three was Muslim. The American students that were interviewed were Alhadj Amadou Diallo, Alex Praxton and Ronnie Burgos. I made three posters depicting Islam, Islamophobia, and pictures of terrorist groups.

The Tunnel ran from March 30-31^st from 4-8 p.m. in SLC. My room was the game suite because of the need for the video media. The game room provided the perfect environment for the video series because of the access to a pull down projection screen and the adjustment of the volume of the presentation. On the setup day I had a tech person help me set up the room and he showed me how to adjust the volume, provided the laptop, and the cord equipment that I would utilize. I hung my posters up, drew on the glass, on the door, with glass markers of hate words used against Muslims, and made little posters saying the title of the project, who it was by, and what club sponsored it. It went very well. I was very proud of the way it went. I enjoyed it much better this year than in previous years because I was involved, and I knew a lot of the people involved. One disadvantage was that only one out of my three volunteers showed up. I had to do the whole first night by myself. The second night my volunteer came and I was able to go on the Tunnel. Overall it was a very good experience for me.