As members of a small yet growing international community on the Hill, we have noticed that our voices have often gone unheard among the greater student body. Our struggles to find an identity on this campus are sidelined in a way that seems uncharacteristic of an environment that is seemingly concerned with the equitable participation of all its members.
Many international students and multicultural students often find themselves unable to voice their multidimensional experiences on campus.
At present, we do not see ourselves as being able to overcome this barrier just by attempting to voice our concerns to the administration. There are inherent, discrete cultural differences between international and multicultural students that are amplified due to a lack of communication and empathy for one another. This makes it hard for us to gain representation as a unified international community when interacting with the community on campus.
We do not have many resources to thoroughly share our multicultural experiences. Attempts we make to share our perspectives range from short inquisitive “cultural” conversations with our friends, to brief class discussions that mainly focus on the shortcomings of our countries and cultures. Since 2007, Our English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) radio show “From Where I Sit” has served as an addition to the few resources available to international students to bridge the gap between diverse international cultures on campus.
By doing so, we hope to bring multicultural individuals into a larger, united, international collective that can stand stronger together and provide us with more accurate representation within the wider Hamilton community.
We, the hosts, see ourselves as facilitators that provide structure to this interval of time with the aim of making it easier for our guests and ourselves to reflect on our cultures and our experiences throughout the world and on the Hill. With this in mind, we interview our guests and let the spotlight fall on them: we cover ongoing global and on-campus events that are relevant to our international audience, and we consolidate diverse tastes in international music to provide new sounds to ears that are wary of listening to the expected playlist. We do this through the medium of the WHCL radio show because we want our stories to be heard by local listeners so that we can provide an alternative to the American narrative that projects their predispositions of us to the public. We hope to stream the show in podcast form to make our content easily accessible to all the different Hamilton audiences as they need to hear us the most. If you would like to tune in, “From Where I Sit” airs on 88.7 WHCL FM, Saturdays at 8 p.m. We will also be streaming on Spotify and Apple Music soon!
