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Bonner Scholars Program

PAGOS Social Justice Program

The PAGOS groups are:

  1. Diversity
  2. Environment
  3. Class

The Class PAGOS group is focusing on how individuals characterize social class and how people react or categorize people of different or same classes. Our group is planning on taking a survey of the students and professors on campus and analyzing the result. We are hoping to see if there are gaps in the way that we view our peers and our professors based on our initial thoughts and preconceptions. We plan on presenting our findings at SLAM.

The Diversity PAGOS group spent the Fall 2012 semester exploring the different facets of diversity in the settings that immediately and broadly surround us all. We began with beginning to study the general stereotypes in America like geographical and racial connotations, then gradually focusing in on the specific culture of Mars Hill College. As a result of our enlightening conversations and gained knowledge, we are planning on filming a student video mosaic comprised of interviews from Mars Hill students from a variety of different cultural, racial, religious, and sexual orientation backgrounds. These videos will be the simple, but powerful, individual stories of the diverse students on this campus—the stories of their transition to Western Appalachia and how they have been received and adjusted as a Mars Hill Mountain Lion. We plan to show the entire campus student body, faculty, staff, and surrounding community the power that cultural education can have, and to hopefully help us all make the most of the beautiful microculture MHC has so artfully crafted.

The Environment PAGOS group wants to start a Student Environmental Center on campus. Our main goal for this semester is to brainstorm ideas and write instructions for numerous environmental programs that can be implemented by student groups or individuals. For example, we will include guidelines for programs such as constructing a community garden, beginning a recycling program, campus clean-ups, composting food waste, and others. Ideally, the Student Environmental Center will be staffed by work-study students, who will work to organize projects and to research further project ideas. To gain interest for our environmental goals, we plan to host a kick-off project this spring that will consist of a recycling competition between dorms.