The International Club on Campus

Hello there,

Greetings.

So, the past weeks have witnessed quite a few activities. The list includes a new set of classes, career fares, a trip to Niagara Falls with the Renaissance and Global Scholars, and a meet with freshmen. However, I’d like to talk about Meliora Weekend, which took place two Saturdays ago on our River Campus.

Founded in 2001 following the University’s sesquicentennial celebration in 2000, Meliora Weekend celebrates reunions, family weekends, and homecoming activities. It’s designed for alumni, parents, students, faculty, staff, and friends of the University of Rochester.

This Meliora Weekend, I was scheduled to meet one Payne Masuku from Zimbabwe. While I didn’t get the chance to meet him for some reason, I grew curious by the day about who this man is, what he studied, and what he spent the bulk of his years doing. Apparently Payne is one of three alumni who helped found the International Club on campus in the 1960s. He stayed at the U of R after his baccalaureate degree to earn a master's degree in history. He returned to Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia) to become a secondary school teacher, and was promoted to headmaster after independence. Also, Payne has spent his career promoting cross-cultural understanding and a broad worldview among his school’s teachers and students.

Last Saturday, as I was made to understand, marked Payne’s return to the River Campus for the first time in almost 50 years. He was here, in part, to participate in a panel discussion with his two other colleagues at an opening event of the Intercultural Center of the University of Rochester. Together, the three would examine Rochester’s global campus of 50 years ago, share their personal experiences as members of the International Club, and how the experience influenced the direction of their lives after leaving college. 

I find Payne’s story quite fascinating for two reasons. First, it feels almost natural, if not entirely so, to be in a school where there are kids from about 100 different countries. While I haven’t been the most regular of club members, I’ve always enjoyed having the freedom to hop from one event of an international student group to the other—be it the Pan African Students Association (PASA), Spanish and Latino Students Association (SALSA), Korean American Students Association (KASA), Taiwanese Students Association (URTSA), etc. Perhaps the term global means “more global” than it meant 50 years ago on college campuses, thanks to contributions by the likes of Payne Masuku and his colleagues.   

Second, I have seen people’s fathers, mothers, and grandparents being driven around in fancy golf carts and telling it to the world that they were once students at the U of R. I'm quite sure if I ever met Payne, he would mention in there somewhere that 50 years had gone by so fast. This leads you to a scary realization that everyone grows old. Of course, if the alternative to growing old is dying young, I’d much rather grow old. Also I couldn’t help but overhear comments like: “the ITS used to have typewriters, not these machines” and “the Todd Union was our Wilson Commons at the time.” Comments like these help you to put your youth in perspective; thus, thanks to advanced technology, it’s much easier these days to undo an error in Microsoft Word than with a typewriter. 

Thanks for reading.