To conclude Ram Inclusion Week, a zoom event titled “What’s Your Story” highlighted five Suffolk community members’ unique life lessons through their own five minute short stories.
The centered theme of this year’s inclusion week was “Telling Our Stories, Building Our Future,” making
the moth-style live storytelling zoom event a perfect concluding opportunity for a mix of staff and students to share important lessons that shaped their lives. The speakers each told vastly different stories, each centered around their own theme that signified the importance of the transformation they sparked.
The first speaker was Tari-Anna Thomas-Smoot, a senior history major at Suffolk. Her story centered around representation and how her life changed when she felt she was represented by her teachers.
“Growing up, I didn’t really have any teachers of color or any Black teachers,” said Thomas-Smoot.
In college, she began taking Black Studies courses taught by Black professors, something that meant a lot to her as she was able to feel represented within her educators, being taught by individuals who share a commonality with her that she had yet to feel throughout her education up to that point.
“You should see yourself everywhere; everywhere you go no matter who you are,” said Thomas-Smoot.
The next speaker was Spriha Paudel, a senior computer science major who told the story of how she learned acceptance after the death of her grandfather.
“Grief does not come with instructions, not at all,” said Paudel. “They said that grief comes and goes, but I’ve learned that it stays; not to hurt you, but to remind you that you loved deeply.”
The next speaker was marketing professor Kimberly Ring, who told the story of her career and how her many rejections from public relations firms brought her to starting her own and then becoming a professor in order to provide students with opportunities and experience that she did not have before entering the professional world. She titled her story, “The Story of ‘No.’”
To conclude her story, Ring discussed the PR firms that rejected her application when she first joined the industry.
“It makes me very very happy when every single one of them, in May, asks me, ‘Can we hire some of your students?’ Because my answer is ‘yes,’” said Ring.
The next speaker was Stephanie Jirard, a professor of Political Science and Legal Studies, who spoke about being true to oneself. Jirard, as a member of the LGBTQ+ community, spoke about her experience showing courage in being herself that served to inspire others to be more accepting of themselves or others of different sexual or gender orientations than themselves.
In her story, Jirard recounted attending a Gay Pride event in which she ran into her old boss from the Department of Justice, David Fishback, whose son came out to his family as gay.
“The way you lived helped me and my wife accept our son,” said Jirard, recounting what Fishback told her at the event.
“Stand in your shoes, speak your truth, tell your stories because you’re never going to know what impact you are going to have with the people you come in contact with,” said Jirard in closing her story.
The final speaker was the Rev. Amy Fisher who told a story of how travel can change one’s perspective and also change the perspective of others. She talked about a trip she took with a childhood friend to South Korea. The first part of the story discussed gaining a new perspective as the two women were shown hospitality and welcomed by the locals while they were visiting a Buddhist shrine.
“Suddenly, the caretaker goes up to the altar, grabs two items and walks to the back row where we were sitting and hands us the food,” said Fisher. “We’re being shown hospitality. We are learning something about what it means to be Buddhist in this particular context.”
The second part of her story discussed travel in the place of someone else, as she was asked to visit her friend’s father in the hospital when she returned home as her friend had to stay and work in South Korea.
“I was transformed by traveling with her and I was transformed by traveling for her to share with her what she could not see,” said Fisher.
In all the stories, there was an overall message of moving confidently forward and being true to one’s individuality. To wrap up Ram Inclusion Week, the stories that were shared were encapsulating the values of Suffolk University through the focus of transformation.
