Peace Studies Award winners from 2013 gathered in the Presidents’ Dining Room on March 24 to share their experiences with the campus. About 40 students and faculties joined the celebration, featuring presentations by award recipients Briana Bloom, MacKenzie Brill, Lars Ericson, Courtney Train and Avery Wallace.
Chair in Political Science and Director in Peace Studies Mimi Gerstbauer explained the purpose of the award.
“It is designed to help students do work or study related to peace, to help fund and support them to do that. That could be anything involves cost beyond normal study at Gustavus,” Gerstbauer said.
The application for 2014 Peace Studies Award was due on April 10. Applicants submitted an application form and an essay that explained their project. According to Gerstbauer, three aspects are considered when selecting award recipients.
First, they evaluate how closely the project is related to peace studies. Then they make sure the cost of the project is not covered by the tuition at Gustavus. They also take the applicants’ independence into consideration which means they give priority to candidates who develop a project by themselves.
The award winners’ projects in 2013 show a wide range of variety in geographic locations and issues of interests. They all revolve around the essence of peace. The projects range from Mackenzie Brill’s trip to a national conference for college women student leaders in Washington, D.C. to Courtney Train’s social justice program in India, from Lars Ericson’s work in an orphanage and teaching in a secondary school in Tanzania to Avery Wallace’s exploration in The Dominican Republic. Briana Bloom did not travel as far as others did. She stayed on campus and completed an independent art project related to peace studies.
Gerstbauer explained why the award can be used in so many different ways.
“Peace is not only the absence of war, but the presence of economic and social justice,” Gerstbauer said.
Junior Courtney Train knew the wide range of meanings that the word “peace” carried, but a semester in India enabled her to be fully mindful of those issues.
“What I ended up coming out with is becoming extremely conscious of social justice issues, whether that’s class, race, gender, sexuality, food, disability. These are things that I knew about and cared about but after going to India I have a completely different perspective, I am so passionate and have a clear understanding of what these issues mean in our world and how they play out and how power and money control basically the whole ideology of a country,” Train said.
Train’s experience in India was life-changing. It has transformed her and she has become more critical of western culture.
“I became a huge critic of capitalism. It doesn’t mean that you hate America. It just means that you start to realize that boarders are man-made and not real. The world does not have sections. We are all connected,” Train said.
The impact and inspiration Train has got out of this experience are in line with the spirit of the award. Gerstbauer guessed that the award has been around 20 years. With $2,000 to distribute a year, the Peace Studies Award has supported numerous students to learn about peace or engage in peacemaking projects.
