The Middlebury Campus

Issue date: 3/9/06 Section: Features

Media Credit: Marie Harber Spectators in John M. McCardell, Jr. Bicentennial Hall stop to admire the Mandela workshop held this past Friday for the Tibet Symposium.

Looking for a clean slate? If you were in the Great Hall in John M. McCardell, Jr. Bicentennial Hall this weekend you would have been surprised to find two Tibetan monks clad in orange robes working on the creation of a mandala. A mandala is a meditative exercise in the impermanent nature of existence. It involves many hours of intricate work placing grains of colored sand in a circular design. The mandala is a unique art form practiced in Tibetan Buddhism in which, once the artwork is complete, monks ceremoniously wipe away the whole design and leave a clean slate indeed as well as a compassionate mindset.

The mandala was a central piece of the International Student Organization (ISO) symposium last weekend entitled "The Changing Face of Tibet." They symposium featured a plethora of Tibetan lectures, films, panels, dances, music and art around campus that helped to foster a dialogue about Tibetan culture here at Middlebury. There are three Tibetan students on campus.

Organizing the Symposium

A team of international students planned the weekend's events. Cheryl McClurg '08 from South Africa, Pema Tshomo '08 from Bhutan and Monica Balan '08 from Romania were in charge. All three girls attended divisions of the United World College for high school and are now active members of Middlebury's ISO. The process of organizing the symposium began last fall when the three presented the idea to the Board of Trustees and, out of eight choices, the Board chose their program.

The subject of Tibet turned out to be an enormous topic to tackle in just one weekend. They broke the task down, Balan explained. "We all did our little bit and it went perfectly."

The purpose of the event, as McClurg explained, was not to have a political debate or to give a biased portrayal of the complicated and emotional Tibetan-Chinese interface, but to instead objectively trace the ways in which Tibet has changed over the past 50 years.

"It was about how Chinese presence in Tibet has changed the culture and society," McClurg said.

"It's very difficult to have anything to do with Tibet without having it be political," explained Tshomo. "Because that's what it comes down to in the end." The students carefully chose the events, however, so that the conference did not have a political angle, but instead focused on global change and the issue of preserving cultures.

Continued...

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