As a neurobiology and medical sciences double-major in my first year at Bay Path University, I am constantly in a state of wonder and curiosity. I find myself wondering in the instance of my own life and those around me, “Why do people think they are weird?” This leads to more intriguing questions. How can I help my community embrace who they really are? How can I help others understand that their differences are amazing? These questions are just the beginning of my long-term goal to prove that what makes humans as great as they are is the differences of every individual. This is a shared viewpoint amongst the team of the Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA). The direct mission of the OMA is to find new ways to celebrate different aspects of every type of community and use the findings to bring people closer together. I conceptualized an event, Tattoo Tuesday, to connect uniqueness of individuals and how this makes a community stronger.
Everyone IS different! Just to get you thinking: if a group of people were shown the same picture, everyone looking at the picture would interpret it differently. This is because the human brain forms memories through association and because each person has their own set of associations, every person will feel dramatically different. With all of this in mind, I wondered then how these differences could be used to make each community stronger.
As a student leader, I am always brainstorming ideas and events that will make the Bay Path community stronger. With this year’s theme on campus being “community,” I chose a topic that crossed many cultures as a form of self-expression. I organized Tattoo Tuesday because it gave me and all participants an opportunity to meet more people and to learn about tattoos from a different perspective. Coming together, we could see AND listen to the meanings of every individuals’ tattoos. With the collaboration and support of Elizabeth Cardona, Executive Director of Multicultural Affairs and International Student Life, I organized the event at the Office of Multicultural Affairs. There, we were able to connect through tattoos at an event that was open to residents, commuters, staff and faculty.
While the goals of the event were to create an inclusive space for students to share the stories behind their tattoos, it unexpectedly became so much more. The spontaneous conversations and opportunity to ask questions in a welcoming environment produced connections between us in surprising ways. We talked about stigmas surrounding tattoos as well as about their meaning in different cultures and communities. We made connections with what is happening in our world right now and concepts such as expression, employment, pain, and so much more bubbled up. Who would have thought that a conversation about something as common as tattoos could be so thought-provoking? I, for one, left the event having more insight and better awareness about the role tattoos play in the lives of those in our BPU community.
