Colorful garb, the casual passing of a soccer ball and food both familiar and exotic characterized a lively picnic to welcome new international students Sunday.
More than 100 international students, both new and returning, as well as dozens of Ohio University faculty members and Athens community members attended the picnic, hosted by the International Student Union and International Student and Faculty Services.
For Austria-born Sonja Molnar, the event was a chance to meet faculty and residents. Molnar had been in the United States for just over a week and will be working toward a graduate degree in English while serving as a German teaching assistant.
We hope international students understand this is a community that wants to meet them and get to know them not just as OU students
but as a part of the Athens community said Krista McCallum Beatty, director of International Student and Faculty Services.
Many Athens residents are regulars at the annual welcome event, which has taken place for more than 30 years. Gifford Doxsee, OU's former director of African Studies, has lived in Athens for 52 years and has attended the picnic for 15 years.
Jane Palmer, advisor for OU's Association for Cultural Exchange, which organizes monthly cultural events for both interested students and faculty, arrived early to meet students.
Palmer, who grew up in Athens, recalled having just two Jewish students and two African-American students in her high school class. Now, she describes the picnic as a long-standing tradition to welcome Athens' ever-growing international population.
Students expressed appreciation for the gesture. Molnar, who has a long to-do list for her year here such as seeing a baseball game and visiting New York, said the people she has met were easy to befriend.
The sentiment isn't a new one. Yegan Pillay, who came to OU from South Africa in 1993 as a Ph.D student studying counseling and returned in 2000 as a counseling education professor in OU's Patton College of Education and Human Services, said events like this one made international students feel valued, both in the '90s and today.
The community really opens their hearts to international students to make them feel they belong here Pillay said. To realize this was being put on for us as a welcome meant a lot for me.
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Rebecca McKinsey
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Junko Vigo Bayashi, a native of Japan, gathers some food during a potluck for international students Saturday at Richland Park. The event was put on by the International Student Union, International Student and Faculty Services and Athens community members, and allows new international students to meet other Ohio University students and faculty. (Alex Goodlett | STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
