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Treasure/Tokens of Friendship

Every issue, we invite one member of the college community to share their delight in an object found on campus. Here, Christina Hankwitz (Center for Global Engagement) talks about the meaningful tokens she – and other members of the CGE staff – receive from time to time from the international students who spend time on campus studying English as a Foregin Language and/or enrolled as degree-seeking students. These gifts feature in displays that evoke fond memories in many a Bemis Center office.

“My shelves are pretty full! My bookshelf display of gifts from our international students is a way to remember them, and a way to understand their culture a bit better. Students go to the trouble of bringing a piece of their home country all this way. It’s something they themselves have identified as being representative of where they’re from, so it must be important to them.

“It helps me remember individual students too. I feel it makes the students understand how important they are to me, that when they give me something I keep it and display it. They’re here, we know they’re here, they’re important to us. The custom started with our former office manager, Linda Wanless, in fact. So that’s a piece of Linda that’s still here. Her shelves were jam-packed! Jana [Dettlaff] and I have kept up the habit pretty consistently.

“There’s a certain amount of rearranging that goes on as new things arrive. … There should probably be more dusting than there is!”

March 17, 2022