Perfect Strangers

International Allies program unites OU students

By Jesse Dunsmore

Senior Reporter

The verdict is in: the knife and fork are easier than chopsticks.

Oakland University biology major Dat Nguyen is experiencing his freshman year of college in a country thousands of miles from his home in Vietnam, but he said what really took getting used to was the food.

Pizza had too much cheese at first, and he thought cereal was some kind of bread — he was appalled when people put milk on it.

“I said, ‘Oh my gosh, how can Americans eat such a thing like this?'” Dat said.

But like the typical American college student, he has warmed up to the new foods mostly because they are “fast.”

His host family, during his brief 2005 stay in the United States, set out chopsticks for him along with silverware. “They thought that I would use [the chopsticks] for dinner,” said Dat. “I didn’t even pay attention to them. I think knife and fork are so much easier.”

But besides mastering utensils and the things that go on them, Dat has a large group of close friends, which he at least partly owes to Trenise Bradley.

Trenise, also a freshman biology major, met Dat through the International Allies student organization at OU.

International Allies was started as a program by International Students and Scholars Assistant Director Petra Knoche in 2006 and was so successful that Knoche decided to form a student organization, according to co-president Molly Rowland.

The organization matches up international students with other students, either domestic or international, based on information given by each student. The pairs, or sometimes trios, offer each other both friendship and experience with an unfamiliar culture.

Rowland said their first meeting attracted 60 members and the group is growing.

“Many students will say they don’t have time, and while it is a commitment, we only ask our members to come to as many events as they are able to, and that they contact their allies once or twice a month,” Rowland said.

Although Trenise lives off campus, and work and studying keep her very busy, she has lunch with Dat and their mutual friends several times a week. Their circle consists of both domestic and international students—what Dat calls a “melting pot group.”

“We kind of mixed in,” said Trenise. “I brought some friends and he brought some friends, and everyone’s really close now.”

Dat and Trenise hang out with OU students from around the world, including China, France, Laos and Saudi Arabia.

While Trenise said that some International Allies pairs turn out to be incompatible, she and Dat got along right away. Their studies are similar, they each describe the other as “outgoing” and they both have an undeniable sense of humor.

Dat said he renamed his sister Chau “Mimi,” while he was studying English, joking that she needed an English name.

Trenise laughed as she described how she and Dat decided to dance the Soulja Boy in Vandenberg Dining Hall.

“Neither of us is that good,” she said.

Both Dat and Trenise have studied French, but Dat said that when she asked him if he spoke French, he just replied, “Oh yeah, ‘Voulez-vous coucher avec moi,'” quoting a risqué lyric from LaBelle’s disco hit “Lady Marmelade.”

Trenise laughed when he told the story. “You shouldn’t say that, by the way,” she told Dat.

Dat didn’t always feel so at ease, he said. When he first came to the United States, he had heard that relations among different ethnic groups were very tense, and he was afraid he might easily offend people.

He said he specifically heard a lot of stereotypes about black Americans.

“At first I didn’t dare to say ‘black people,'” said Dat. “I’d say ‘African’ or something.”

Racial relations are an issue that didn’t come up much for Dat back home. “In Vietnam, we have just one race, just Vietnamese. Americans have a huge diversity of people.”

Trenise, who is black, said: “He had some stereotypes coming into this, and I had some coming into it, so I think the main thing we helped each other do is break the whole barrier down.”

“It prevents us from being close friends if he’s afraid to say something to me because maybe he heard in his country that it was offensive.”

Apparently, the barrier has been thoroughly broken.

“When I [met] Trenise, I thought, ‘oh my gosh, black people are so nice!'” Dat said, laughing.

Both Dat and Trenise have dealt with some racial tension from others — nothing overt, they say: a strangely dismissive line-cutter here, some extra-rude mall security there.

Dat said most people are very courteous to him. A classmate last year let him copy her notes and helped him with homework because he had trouble understanding the professor.

Another student regularly offers him rides to school from his apartment in Beacon Hill. He got his laptop computer from an American friend who wasn’t using it anymore.

The negative incidents are few and far between but have some intangible element that makes both Dat and Trenise question the offenders’ motivations, they say.

Trenise wants their friendship to help promote better racial understanding. “We’re kind of hoping other people see us and are just like, ‘oh, okay, I can have an Asian friend and I can have someone who’s Caucasian, and not be afraid to say something that might offend them.'”

And that’s what International Allies is about according to Rowland. “Wars start all over the world because of misunderstandings between cultures,” she said. “If only we all understood each other. And we can, if we just try.”