Category: student life Page 2 of 14

As the end of the year was upon us and students were going between applying for jobs, moving out, and preparing for the summer, I swooped in to cause a distraction and find out what the average CMU student is using their summer for.

The average answer is one you would expect: working to pay for school. But I found a few students that, in my opinion, were doing something more interesting with their months off.

One residence student is taking a trip to South Korea and possibly Japan with their family. As the writer (fuelled by jealousy and surprise), I absolutely had to ask some questions. “My aunt’s family is from Korea, so they’re meeting up with us and showing us around,” the student explained. “Plus, my mom’s a huge fan of the culture and wants to see it all. I’m really excited!”

While travelling was a pattern among the answers, not everyone is travelling to sightsee. A student athlete I know headed over to British Columbia for work planting trees. He’s been doing this for a couple years now, and seems to really like what he’s doing. Hundreds of thousands of trees will be planted by him and many other groups over the summer, in areas that loggers have cleared.

Another group of students are preparing to go on a two-week trip to India through CMU’s Estamos program, getting academic credit and experiencing another culture away from home. Estamos is a chance for any student to experience the world while still fulfilling degree requirements. From what I heard, this trip to India is going to be a really exciting one!

More mundanely, this writer has no plans for the summer that are as exciting. I travelled back home to Ontario and I’m splitting my time between working for school and seeing family and friends. I work at an adventure farm, which is basically a huge playground for families! It includes a petting zoo, wagon rides, and a low-level treehouse ropes course—all a big hit with kids. It’s all bee and farm themed, and my favourite job I’ve ever had. Aside from working, I don’t have any big trips planned, but I do see many sunny beach days in my future.

Whether you’re returning home for the summer, travelling, working most of the time, or taking a much-deserved rest after the school year, I send good vibes and hope that the summer is everything you need. Maybe these CMU students can inspire you to try something new while getting rejuvenated for the 2024/25 school year. Have a great summer everyone, and see you in September!

Cloe Penner is entering her third year of a Bachelor of Arts degree, majoring in history.

I was always a quiet kid—quite aloof, utterly idealistic. My time was primarily spent wandering in my own head rather than engaging with the Big Wide World outside the closed doors. So it was no surprise that the idea of me spending my high school years abroad shocked my parents, even more so since I initiated it.

Studying abroad is inarguably a risky financial investment with the hope of securing a better future somewhere else far from home, but in the mind of a 13-year-old, the whole concept was stripped down to “travelling to Neverland” to see with my own eyes what is ever and what is never.

Soon, we found ourselves looking through different options, considering several hotspots for international students, and we picked Winnipeg due to the simple fact of it having lower costs of living. Winnipeg is a pleasant place once you’ve settled in and made amends with it. Now that I’m used to living here, it’s going to take some convincing to relocate anywhere else.

Despite being a high school graduate in Canada, it was not easy for me going through the transition to a post-secondary institution. Graduating is never an easy step for any of us, really. Not only is it a milestone of academic success, but also the gateway to adulthood. What is it like being an adult, anyway? Peers drifting away, days that seem to last for an eternity now that you’re working, the realization of unrealized dreams and aspirations? No. Most likely, you find yourself back at Base Zero (after ascending to a higher level, of course—it’s like playing games) with a new set of vital choices to make.

One can only imagine how difficult it must be for you—especially the international students—to deal with the additional amount of stress that comes with this trade-off. People handle this situation differently: attend university immediately after high school, take gap years to travel, take on part-time jobs, or learn a new skill. In my case: an uneventful graduation followed by a contagious global virus. Soon after, I fell into the lap of CMU. At Base Zero.

I had no expectations coming to CMU because this was not in my initial plan, yet I was welcomed by the sense of friendliness that is uncommon elsewhere. Despite the scale of our school, it seems like we are constantly working on something more significant than ourselves. Most decisions are made with the consideration of an individual to best accommodate everyone. There will always be someone to talk to if you feel lost. Community plays a crucial role in fostering self-growth and individuality, which is characteristic of the university.

Many foreign students grew up in urbanized areas of our home countries, which adds an extra layer of challenge to the adjustment phase at CMU, if not outright culture shock. It’s going to get easier; I promise. You will become more in-tune with the rhythm of this mid-sized city in the Canadian prairies and its people. Sometimes it’s the people that make you feel at home, not the house itself.

The 15-year-old me would never have imagined that I would be at CMU, writing this blog post. All living things depend on their environment to supply them with what they need. However, in order to thrive, they have to push themselves out of their comfort zone, just as a caterpillar sheds its cocoon and spreads its wings to become a butterfly or moth. The choice is yours.

I hope you find your place in this Big Wide World.

Rosalyn Dao is an international student in her first year of a Bachelor of Business Administration degree.

The claim that Canadian Mennonite University has a strong sense of community is clichéd, but it is also true. Most of my classes have fewer than twenty students, many faculty have students over to their houses for meals throughout the year, and office doors are open more often than closed. There is also a real feeling of Mennonite identity on campus, where so many students share faith and genealogy (often an important research task before asking out a peer). This sense of campus-wide community is genuinely good, especially in an era when deep social connection and cohesion can be difficult to find. It is why I decided to attend CMU, and why many students feel the need to foster and protect it semester after semester.

But “community” can pose challenges to responding to instances of sexual violence on campus. I want to highlight two challenges in particular. First, the celebration of community can implicitly discourage actions that may be seen as damaging to it. If a survivor of sexual violence feels that coming forward with their experience might put stress on their university’s valued communal identity, it is plausible that they might feel deterred from addressing it through a disclosure. Second, perpetrators can be included in, or even integral to, campus communities. When this is the case, survivors may be concerned that those in positions of authority will not effectively respond to their disclosures. If a perpetrator is one of only eight students in your favourite professor’s class, if they eat dinner at a senior administrator’s house once a semester, or if you see them regularly drop by a staff member’s office just to chat for a minute because the door was open, it might be difficult to envision how your experience of sexual violence would be handled impartially by the institution. The same bonds that make some university communities so tight-knit can also restrict the sense of freedom that their survivors feel that they have to share their experiences.

Smaller post-secondary institutions like my own need to grapple with this tension between protecting their sense of community and fully supporting survivors who want to share their experiences within them. But even if the tension can never be fully resolved, it is heartening to see my university adopt the REES reporting platform this fall. It is heartening to me because REES is precisely not a product created by, or for, CMU specifically. Instead, as a platform designed for all post-secondary institutions, REES stands distinctly outside my campus’s specific culture. As such, it exists as an avenue through which survivors can disclose their experiences without having to engage directly with another member of the CMU community, if that engagement would cause discomfort.

Yet, even as REES is being introduced as an extra-communal platform, its creators have remained sensitive to the value of community. When I participated in a feedback session for the platform, I was impressed when the session leader stressed that REES is only one, optional way through which a survivor can share their experience in a university setting. In doing so, she made it clear that the introduction of REES still allows for the face-to-face disclosure methods that other survivors might find helpful or even necessary. In other words, the introduction of REES should address the risks of a campus’ communal identity for some survivors, but in a way that does not compromise the presence of a community that can be helpful for others.

Examining the interplay between community and sexual violence can be uncomfortable, but it would be a mistake to fear for our communal identity in doing so. I am convinced that acknowledging the risks of community does not diminish it, so long as our responses to these risks are thoughtful and rigorous. Instead, when we look for new and creative ways to support survivors, like REES, our communities will become stronger than ever before.

Nathan Dueck is a fourth year student at Canadian Mennonite University working towards a double major in history and philosophy. He is a student representative on the CMU Sexual Violence Committee and was 2019-20 Vice-President Advocacy for the CMU Student Council.