Students and refugees interact, learn journalism in special topics class

Lincoln isn't just a college town. It's also a popular resettlement community for refugees.

 

One journalism class at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln is bringing together students and Lincoln refugees to tell the stories of the refugees' lives abroad and their journeys to Nebraska.

 

Special Topics: New Voices is an elective class offered in the College of Journalism and Mass Communications. The class serves two purposes. First, students improve their reporting and writing skills by interviewing refugees and writing long-form stories throughout the semester. Second, Tim Anderson, the co-creator and professor of New Voices, recruits refugees who are interested in learning about American journalism to write their own stories. All completed stories are published on the Nebraska Mosaic website. 

 

"A lot of students have interests out in the world and involving refugees in the site lets them tell their own stories," said Anderson.

Anderson said the class was co-created with advertising professor Phil Willet after the school won a grant competition designed to fund journalism projects for refugee communities in 2010. 

 

Once the Nebraska Mosaic program website was launched last October, student and refugee stories could be published.

Faris Peer is a refugee from Iraq and has been living in Lincoln since last August. He has recently written his first story to be published on Nebraska Mosaic.

 

He said writing for Nebraska Mosaic has improved his English, which he said he hopes will help him get a job as an interpreter. 

"It's not hard to write in Arabic, but translating to English and the way journalists here write, it takes a long time," Peer said.

 

Peer's first story was about a man he knows personally who also left Iraq as a refugee, bringing his six children with him. The man had to leave his wife behind and refused to take a picture for Peer's story, saying it could be dangerous for his family still in Iraq.

Peer also had to leave Iraq, but was able to bring his wife and daughter. 

 

"There are two reasons we left Iraq: We worked with U.S. military so we would be in trouble with the government and because of our religion," said Peer.

 

Peer currently has family waiting for visas in Jordan so they can also move to Lincoln.

 

"I think stories like this are super valuable because it makes people think about their own lives in a different perspective," said Emily Nohr, a senior news-editorial major enrolled in New Voices. 

 

Nohr said she usually meets with a refugee from Burma, the subject of her current story, once a week. 

 

"I know I've learned a lot just talking to her," Nohr said. "I've learned we have so much in common even though we come from opposite sides of the world."

 

Anderson compared the students in the class to foreign correspondents and said Lincoln is a much more diverse community than it seems. 

 

Nohr agrees that the class has exposed a part of Lincoln that she never knew existed. 

 

"It's like being in a study abroad course," she said. "I knew that Lincoln was a big resettlement area for refugees but I didn't know to the great extent that it actually is."

 

Now in his third semester of teaching the class, Anderson thinks it's important for journalism students to get out in the community and learn the refugees' stories. 

 

Nohr said she thinks the refugees can appreciate the fact that their own stories will be told. 

 

"It's letting them have a voice in what has happened to them and I think they realize how important that is."

 

Shelbyfleig@dailynebraskan.com