By Emily Littleton and Tiffany Dawson
Union’s international community was welcomed to Jackson in a flood of Southern hospitality Thursday, Sep. 10. at the inaugural International and Exchange Student Dinner.
Serenaded by warm strains of Josh Smith’s country music, 60 students from across the globe filled City Hall along with their host families and community leaders. Lively conversations wove together among the tables decked in red-checked cloths as guests enjoyed a true Southern buffet of fried chicken, potato salad, macaroni and cheese and sweet tea.
Of the students gathered, approximately 25 were from Union representing countries including Malaysia, Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria, South Korea and a dozen others. Some have been in Jackson only a few weeks, while others have studied at Union for several years.
Yoo Jin Moon, a freshman math major from South Korea, said the dinner was a nice thought and that overall her experience at Union so far has been a good one.
“It’s so much better than I expected,” she said. “There’s like an invisible bond between the students [at Union] because of Christ. We really are all brothers and sisters.”
After everyone had a chance to enjoy the food, Mayor Jerry Gist officially welcomed all the students to Jackson and presented each student with a pin bearing the seal of Jackson as they introduced themselves and the country they were from.
“As we learn from each other in different ways, I hope we will all develop a deeper appreciation of the rich mosaic of people and cultures that comprise our community,” she said.
After the dinner, everyone was encouraged to attend Jackson Live, a concert at the Carl Perkins Civic Center that including a lip sync battle between college students and administrators from the five colleges across town.
There they discovered that President Samuel W. “Dub” Oliver can NaeNae, and so can Jackson’s other four higher education leaders. In fact, the five of them beat the five student representatives from each college.
Students erupted in cheers for the presidents far louder than for the student competitors, who lip-synced “Don’t Stop Believin’.’” It was “the icebreaker of all icebreakers,” said master of ceremonies Bart Barker, an anchor for WBBJ 7 Eyewitness News.
“It was fun to do that with my fellow presidents,” Oliver said. “We did not practice as a group. It was probably evident that a couple of us looked at some YouTube videos. Some of us were more freestyling than others.”
Alongside Oliver were presidents and administrators from Lane College, University of Memphis at Lambuth, Jackson State Community College, and Tennessee College of Applied Technology at Jackson.
“I knew I was going to lose against Dr. Dub ‘NaeNaeing,'” said Union’s student representative and SAC president Reeves Garrett. “But I went a little all-out and tried to make Union look like the awesome place it is.”
Brian Simmons, Lane College’s SGA president and student representative, said he hadn’t expected the outcome based on the chaos backstage beforehand.
“Backstage [the administrators] were kind of frenzied going back and forth with the NaeNae,” he said.
For Lane College President Logan Hampton, Thursday was only a warm up for Saturday, according to Simmons, when Hampton competed in Dancing with the Local Stars in Dickson County. He said his staff convinced him by reminding him of his desire to establish a community school for the arts on Lane’s campus.
After the lip-sync battle, the Chris Weaver Band from Nashville took the stage and Reggi’s Barbeque and Eat Box whipped up concessions.
More than 250 people from the five colleges attended, according to Mandy White, Jackson Chamber of Commerce’s senior vice president for economics development, and she said she hopes in the future that number grows.
The goal was to expose students to all that Jackson has to offer and foster collaboration and unity among the city’s various colleges.
“Higher education can be a very insular world,” said TCAT Director Jeff Sisk. “But getting together cuts across racial lines, it cuts across denominational lines.”
