Dena Simmons '05, who majored in Spanish, is pictured during an intership she served at New York's City Hall during the summer of 2004. She received a prestigious Truman Scholarship in the spring of 2004, which helped pay for her senior year at Middlebury and for graduate studies.
My friends and I, inspired by the overwhelming response at the College to the events of September 11th, formed a club to share the diversity of the Middlebury campus with members of the community, particularly local children.
By educating people about differences, we could encourage understanding between individuals and groups that might not normally 'mix' with each other—the first step toward assuring that something like September 11th won't happen again. We called our new group MIX.
We were able to offer an after-school program about Puerto Rican culture to fifth and sixth graders at a nearby school. MIX is now in its third year, and now boasts 40 members who go out into four schools to lead after-school programs about difference—in race, religion, culture, socio-economic status and more.
We also sponsor a spring reading festival where children from the town travel the world through books. Our goal is to expose these kids to different cultures and diversity that they would not otherwise see, thus better preparing them to live in our more diverse country.