Lott Leadership Institute News

Students Compare Civil Rights Struggles, Form Bonds During Summer Exchange Program

Release Date: 2006-07-05

Organized around twin themes of globalization and multiculturalism, the Young Leaders International Exchange Program has reached its halfway mark at the University of Mississippi this summer. Fifteen students from Port Elizabeth, South Africa, have joined 17 students from UM for the five-week program.

Thus far, the group has taken a two-and-a-half week excursion across the South, visiting presidential libraries, industrial centers and locales in the impoverished Mississippi Delta. The students spent several days in Washington, D.C., and are headed to South Africa this week for the remainder of the program.

"This exchange program is bringing us together," said Travis Dell, an English and film major at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in South Africa. "I've loved being able to see the similarities of our countries and learning how my peers here in America think. We have a common bond."

UM international studies major McDaniel Wicker of Tupelo agreed: "I've enjoyed traveling across the South and interacting with our new international friends," he said. "We've formed relationships, and I look forward to seeing how South Africa is dealing with its own civil rights struggle."

Dell said tales about the heat and hospitality of the South have been confirmed, but his idea of racial inequality here has been shattered.

"We had our preconceived perceptions about the civil rights struggle in the South," he said. "We all had heard horrendous stories about the past, but those don't hold true today. It's been a pleasant surprise."

The tour in South Africa includes visits to Nelson Mandela's home and museum along with key cultural, political and industrial centers before wrapping up in Cape Town.

"I'm really looking forward to have the chance to compare life in the rural areas of South Africa to what I know here in the Mississippi Delta," Wicker said. "This is simply a tremendous opportunity."

One of the program's goals is to establish lifelong relationships. The friendships formed through the exchange program will enhance students' understanding of the world, UM Chancellor Robert Khayat said.

"Bringing students from other parts of the world to interact with our students at Ole Miss provides a tremendous learning opportunity," Khayat said. "Then to have our students travel abroad to raise their awareness of global issues will certainly help prepare them to become tomorrow's world leaders."

Bill Gottshall, executive director of the Trent Lott Leadership Institute, said South Africa was selected for the program because of challenges facing that country: "As South Africa emerges from the international isolation of the apartheid era, the country faces many obstacles that parallel that of the southeastern United States."

by Tobie Baker