Olivia Love
Staff Writer
Diantha Smith is a Ph.D. student at ISU who has been proactive in showing love and support for international students.
She knows first-hand what it is like to be in a foreign country and have to figure everything out. Because of this, she has been invested in the well-being of these students for a while.
“When I was doing my undergraduate I was an international student,” Smith said. “I got to go live in Syria for a semester and study Arabic there. Ever since then, I think I’ve been aware and more empathetic to international students.”
When she started working on her master’s degree, she taught a class that had several international students from various countries.
From this, she has learned that being a teacher requires a person to be attuned to these students in order to fulfill their set of needs.
“Part of the reason why I chose ISU to do my doctorate work was because I knew there was a high population of Middle Eastern and international students,” Smith said. “I wanted to be a part of a program that supported these students.”
Smith’s most recent project has been a logo that can be found just about anywhere on campus. It is the green dot that has the word “friend” written in both Arabic and English.
“As I was thinking about the events that have happened recently, everyone that I talked to was talking about how much they wanted to support, they wanted to find a way to act and be involved in the community,” said Smith.
The purpose of the logo is to make all the support that exists on campus physically visible. The colors of the logo are white and green which represent Islam and the green dot is a sign that supports anti-bullying and anti-violence on college campuses.
“I do realize that we don’t just want to single out our Arab international students, we want to be friends with all of our international students,” Smith said. “But I believe at this time, it is particularly important to identify this community and say that we are friends with this community.”
In addition to creating this sign of friendship, Smith created and spent her own money on pins that further spread the message. She will be handing this pins out on campus so keep an eye out.
Off campus, she is an active participant in her church’s women’s group and is working to create events and gatherings to support international students there.
“I feel like a lot of people have a lot of misconceptions about Islam and I feel like there are huge and wonderful overlaps between Islam and Christianity and Islam and Mormonism. I think if people understood better, they would not feel threatened at all by Islam,” Smith said.
Smith has learned a lot from working on these projects. She has grown as a teacher and a friend and has gained hope for the future.
“I have been amazed by just how open people have been,” said Smith. “I think that everyone I’ve talked to has just really wanted to do something to let the students here know that they’re welcome, particularly the ones from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.”
From here, Smith hopes that people take what has been done and go further with it. She encourages adaptation of the project and spreading of the message. This has happened at the College of Southern Idaho as students have taken the logo that Smith created and put it in different colored circles and put the word “friend” in other languages.
