The Importance Of Diversity In Missouri Valley College

Missouri Valley College is a campus that is home to students from all over the world. The campus is home to students from 43 different states and 40 countries. Jalen Holsten said “This to me is what I think makes Missouri Valley a great place. We have such a deep population of students that come from all over the world to go to school here. Never in my wildest dreams would I think that I would be able to meet people from Serbia or Morocco until I came to Missouri Valley College.” This diversity leads to many opportunities to meet new people and understand different cultures. Along with these diverse cultures represented comes various religions. MVC is home to followers of Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and even Wicca. Muhammed …show more content…
Pam Sebastian has attempted to help open up the cultural understanding before. “I’ve run into some push back about interfaith conversation because it’s not straight Christian conversation and I don’t think it has to be and I don’t think it should be,” Sebastian said. Sebastian believes that there is a lot of potential to really open up interfaith conversation on a campus like MVC. “I think we have phenomenal potential. I mean here we are marooned in the middle of the corn and soybean fields with 43 states and 40 countries represented. We need to be doing a lot more and it needs to be visibly a lot more,” Sebastian said. Sebastian had a suggestion of something that could be done to help facilitate this interfaith conversation. “It’s not a conversation that many people want to have, but my desire would be to set up a space and set up different work studies of different affiliations and have them simply be there to have conversation with people. That would make me very happy.” She added, “The students need to be the ones to say here’s the room. Here’s the space at the end of the hall where someone is going to be at these times and were going to talk about this.” This idea is shared by …show more content…
“It would be awesome to get all these different beliefs together and demonstrate that we have more common beliefs than the world perceives.” One concern with this type of interfaith conversation is that the students simply might not participate. “I’d be stepping out on a limb to suggest this, but I would think that 65 percent of our kids are Nones or they may identify as Baptist because they went to church with their grandma when they were in third grade,” Sebastian said. A None is a person who has rejected organized religion with more focus on being