Ughh, what a long evening this was. Instead of being held at 5:30pm, it was delayed from 6:15 to 7:45. How ironic!! I tried not to fall asleep by listening very carefully and it was pretty interesting. First when I arrived, I went to grab some food and beverages. Food always comes first by the way. The room, 14-220, was filled with elderly with just about four students. I didn’t know this floor existed and I thought I entered the wrong room once I saw just about everyone inside were old people.
In this room was the School of Public Affairs, and a few deans introduced themselves about what they were going to talk about. The topic discusses about anti-semitism, a belief of physically and verbally abusing and vandalism of the Jews. Anti-semitism had affected many people worldwide and also students in college campuses. The lady talked through many hours of it discussing what kind of effects it had on the Jews. She talked about the different kinds of schools such as UC Ervine and University of California, that had anti-semitism going on. She also gave a variety of examples of students who encountered through this such as one student was walking down to school, the same road he been taking everyday and passed by an Indian group. This group surrounded him, threatening to kill him. Many of the frightened students transferred out because they were assaulted, causing intimidation and uncomfortableness. This incident is still a global problem today and hope that there will be a turning point to it as time goes on.
At the end of her long speech, there were many audiences who stepped up to the mike to ask questions related to this. This just got my hopes down just as I thought this is whole thing was finally over. But she kept on answering questions and some were answered in a paragraph form. I was getting annoyed for taking such a long time. There was one old man whose voice was so loud that he didn’t use the mike to ask his question. I believed everyone was annoyed with him because he asked the question out of nowhere without waiting for his turn. His voice carried that it woke up one person from the back corner. Once the questions were all asked, I went to get some last minute drink before I left. Finally, is over, when I first thought it had no ending to it, but at the end this was an interesting workshop.