Widening Horizons

Though I am often disgruntled about what is disallowed at the college, I was stunned this week by what was actually allowed. Ten male students from from our brother college were allowed to come to the auditorium on the women's campus and perform a charity concert. When it was first announced, I assumed it would be something traditional or somber. But as the event neared, the tickets sold out, and my students all informed me rather coyly that they would not be coming to my noon class on Thursday. I was then asked 'kindly', by management, to please attend the event as a chaperone, where a raucous event ensued. The music was booming, the boys were jamming out covers of Arabic pop tunes and even some original music. The girls were dancing in their seats, filming with their blackberries, screaming their applause, and despite being told constantly to 'SSSIT' by the various deans and department heads wandering the aisles, they had an awesome hour and a half of normal college debauchery.

Though it might sound completely normal to you, it is not normal in a place where the culture prohibits dancing, live music (except the singing of the Koran) and mixing of the sexes. Knowing all of this, the institution where I work continues to be a strange college-aged environment. The students at the college are day students, and their exit from the college each day is restricted by their 'out' passes. So if a student with a 2pm out-pass approaches the security gate at say, 1:45, she will be directly turned back into college grounds by an Indian security guard. Families who send their girls to our college, (women in most countries but still 'girls' in this one) are comforted by our closed-campus environment. Guardians of our students have full access to their student records, and they even get to sign off on permissions for field trips. Crazy you might think, since most 20 year old women in the US or Europe, Australia and China, and Japan too, enjoy full-blown adult status. In these countries, 20 year old women can get drivers licenses, enroll in college, visit their friends, and more or less come and go as they please, on their own.

But this is a newly opened culture, a culture where many women over 60 did not attend anything more than the mosque school. Advancements are on the horizon, but we, and they, must be patient, lest all of the rich culture that goes along with the restrictive tradition be washed away with modernization. But such patience does not come easy to this modern American faculty member, and so often still I am struck silent by a student who is not ashamed to say that her husband won't let her get a driving license, or her brother disallows her to attend musical events at the college. I should be grateful for the honesty I suppose, but I can't help but be shocked by the unabashed 'OK-ed-ness' with the day-to-day restrictions placed on them by the patriarchal family figures. Not stirring the pot does not come easily for me, but pot-stirrers in this culture do not last long in their jobs, and cultural craziness aside, I more or less like my job. So my tongue remains tied (most of the time), and I am grateful for the growing number of students from the more open families, who can comfortably attend live music at the college, and talk about their wishes openly to visit my country, or even get a job and a license to drive.