The First Year Reading Program aims to encourage students to see life from different perspectives but how is this mission being perceived by students?
Arriving in the mailboxes of incoming freshmen everywhere, book assignments for the First Year Reading Program have become an unsavory summer homework project.
Each year, the Manresa Project has chosen a book for freshmen to read during the summer, books that many students have chosen to ignore. According to Manresa, the books freshmen read help them explore their gifts and reflect upon how they can use those gifts to help others. The book aims to challenge student perspectives, showing them new ways of viewing the world.
“The purpose [of the First Year Reading Program] is to help students know who they are and how to be active citizens,” described Mary Ferwerda, assistant director of the Manresa Project. Many Marquette students, however, saw the summer reading as busywork and not a life changing experience.
“[I read it] because it was something that I had to read, I wasn’t expecting it to do much in my life,” said Alisa Leoni a sophomore in the college of Health Sciences.
Along with their book, every incoming freshman received study questions with a due date and was told to finish the text before arriving on campus for Orientation. But how many students followed through?
“I never read the book. The [discussion] classes were a joke. No one else read the book or even took it seriously,” said Mark Kane, a senior in the College of Communication. “It had no impact on my life whatsoever.”
Faculty members lead discussions on the readings at Freshmen Orientation, hypothetically holding students accountable for the reading material. Eric Greenwald, a freshman in the College of Engineering, admitted he had never read the book assigned to his class, “Bombingham” by Anthony Grooms, and there were no repercussions
Kane along with the rest of the class of 2008 read “Bird by Bird” by Anne Lamott which detailed the struggles and triumphs of a writer. According to the First Year Reading Program website, “Writing is also a kind of metaphor for life: it helps you to observe and appreciate and listen to the world around you.” And for students with a background in the topic, this holds true.
“It did impact me because I really like to write and [Lamott] had interesting things to say about writing processes,” said Margaret Smith, a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences.
Some members of the class of 2009 had similar reactions when they read “A Lesson Before Dying” by Ernest J. Gaines. In this novel, Grant Wiggins, an African American teacher who had been educated in the North, returns to his Southern community. While there, he is persuaded to help educate a man on death row so he could die with dignity.
“In the short-term, the book impacted me, but it didn’t really leave a lasting impression,” said Carrie Burklund, a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences.
“It just seemed similar to all the other books about Southern conflict like in ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’,” said Meaghan Minihan, a junior in the college of Arts and Sciences. Discouraged by this, Minihan only finished the first quarter of the novel.
“It did make me think about things that I wouldn’t normally consider, but once I put the book down it didn’t really last,” said Brady Jadin, a sophomore in the College of Business.
Lauren Miller, a sophomore in the College of Engineering, on the other hand, enjoyed her book, “Hunger” by Lan Samantha Chang. Chang wrote about a Chinese woman who faced competing pressures from her family and her struggle to make decisions in the midst of this struggle.
“It was really neat to learn about different cultures and the way that someone from these cultures looks at situations,” said Miller of her experience.
A reaction similar to that of Miller was the hope for the Class of 2011’s book, “Bombingham” by Anthony Grooms. Manresa stated that they chose “Bombingham” to “honor the 40th anniversary of the open housing marches of 1967 and 1968, a notable era in Milwaukee’s own civil rights history.”
In Grooms’ book, an African American soldier recalls his conflict between his family and his desire to participate in the Civil Rights movement.
“ ‘Bombingham’ opened my eyes to how life isn’t easy for everyone,” said Thomas Kavanagh, a freshman in the college of Business. For those students who did read the book, Manresa achieved its goal to encourage them to see things from a different perspective. However, the question still remains as to whose perspective the new freshmen were seeing.
The assigned books were chosen by a handful of faculty and administrators. These administrators were named to a board that is written in the grant Manresa received from the Lilly Endowment Inc. It included the Assistant Dean for New Student Programs, the Assistant Director of Manresa, the Director of Manresa, the Senior Associate Dean of the Office of Student Development, a representative from the English Department, and another faculty representative. Absent from this board were representatives from University Ministry, the Business School, the Chemistry Department and other social and natural science departments. Anyone in the Marquette community can nominate books for consideration but the final decision will be up to this board.
“We try to bring in cultural context such as race or geography to lift the program and have students glean something from it,” said Ferwerda.
In the last four years, two books have been about African American identity, one about Chinese Americans and one about a female writer.
However, despite Manresa’s attempts to widen student worldviews, many freshmen appeared to be left with only a vague impression of Marquette and its mission.
“The book didn’t impact me, but it did give me an idea as to who Marquette is and what it stands for,” said Jessica Strobel, a junior in the College of Health Sciences.
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