Win­dows and Mir­rors Se­ries Com­ing to Bethel

MISHAWAKA—Dur­ing the past few months, racial ten­sion in our coun­try has soared. Shoot­ings, protests and ri­ots have fre­quently dom­i­nated the me­dia.  

But even be­fore all this tur­bu­lence be­gan, Bethel was al­ready ini­ti­at­ing var­i­ous ini­tia­tives to help stu­dents to stay aware of these im­por­tant top­ics and to help them per­son­ally take ac­tion against racism.  

“I think it’s just God’s tim­ing,” said Shawn Holt­gren, vice pres­i­dent for stu­dent de­vel­op­ment.  

Holt­gren de­vel­oped the name for the se­ries and played a large role in choos­ing the speak­ers. 

“We wanted to give stu­dents a win­dow into some­body else’s life, walk around in some­body else’s shoes,” Holt­gren said. “I want to be able to peer into some­one else’s world while gaz­ing at my own... I want to em­pathize with where you’re com­ing from, but I’ve got to cri­tique my own ex­pe­ri­ence.” 

Bethel Uni­ver­sity Pres­i­dent Gregg Chenoweth spoke for the open­ing chapel of the se­ries. 

“This has been a prob­lem for our coun­try, al­ways,” Chenoweth said. “But this is one of those mo­ments again where there’s a spike of aware­ness.” 

Chenoweth said he be­lieves Bethel is a great place for stu­dents to learn and grow in this dif­fi­cult topic. 

“I think very op­ti­misti­cally about Bethel not as only an or­ga­ni­za­tion that is trans­ac­tional... I’d hope we’d be trans­for­ma­tional, not just for stu­dents, but for our com­mu­nity,” Chenoweth said. 

Chenoweth en­cour­aged stu­dents to reach out to their peers, to go be­yond be­ing friendly with peo­ple of color to be­ing friends; he said this is one of the most eye-open­ing things some­one can do. 

“I have found that an at­ti­tude change is so much harder to ac­com­plish than pro­gram­ming a se­ries like this,” Chenoweth said. “The real pro­ject is at­ti­tude change.” 

Bethel is look­ing to take a stand be­yond chapel as well; the Bethel Uni­ver­sity Board of Trustees is prepar­ing an of­fi­cial state­ment that will be pub­lished in late Oc­to­ber. Fur­ther­more, Bethel will be in­clud­ing a new “in­clu­sion in the class­room” sec­tion in each syl­labus be­gin­ning in Jan­u­ary. 

“What we’re try­ing to say is, our fac­ulty are com­mit­ted to this,” said Chenoweth. “There are mo­ments in class­rooms where there are op­por­tu­ni­ties to ed­u­cate stu­dents... in cul­tural aware­ness.” 

Bethel is also prepar­ing a civil rights im­mer­sion ex­pe­ri­ence to be launched in the spring that will be or­ga­nized by the Di­ver­sity and In­clu­sion Coun­cil. This will al­low a small group of stu­dents to tour the Amer­i­can South to see lo­ca­tions sig­nif­i­cant to the civil rights move­ment. 

“To be able to be there and ex­pe­ri­ence that could be very pow­er­ful for the in­di­vid­u­als,” Chenoweth said. “But part of the deal is, those in­di­vid­u­als who are cho­sen then come back to cam­pus... we’ll ask them to speak to a min­i­mum of two if not three groups.” 

An­other step Bethel is tak­ing is a work­force di­ver­sity ini­tia­tive. 

“I want to be very clear that the goal with this is not a quota, the goal’s not the out­come, the goal’s op­por­tu­nity,” Chenoweth said. “What we want to do is we want to make sure when Bethel is hir­ing, that the pipeline of can­di­dates in­cludes peo­ple of color.” 

As Chenoweth re­flects on his own life, he is grate­ful for all the mea­sures Bethel is tak­ing and hopes stu­dents re­al­ize the im­por­tance of the is­sue. 

“I wish some­one had taken me aside when I was your age and talked to me about this,” Chenoweth said. “I wish that back then I had a clearer aware­ness of what it meant to live in a cul­ture that treats peo­ple dif­fer­ently based on their skin and what the very op­ti­mistic as­pi­ra­tional mo­ti­vat­ing vi­sion the gospel is on this.” 

Holt­gren hopes stu­dents can re­al­ize the im­por­tance this plays in their Chris­t­ian walk. 

“This is not just a race is­sue,” Holt­gren said. “I think this is a Chris­t­ian thing to do.”