Wilde's '11 bid to become first white MPC falls short for now
Sophia Li
Issue date: 2/27/08 Section: Campus News
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But Wilde found out Tuesday that, for now, she has failed in her bid. Twenty-two students were selected as MPCs, but Wilde was waitlisted.
"It is a huge letdown," she said.
There are nine students on the waitlist, said Jennifer Soroko MA '06, assistant director of the Third World Center. She said she did not know if any white applicants have been placed on the wait list in previous years. She added in an e-mail to The Herald that the selection process is confidential.
Owen Hill '10, another white applicant this year, was also wait-listed. He declined to comment for this article.
Wilde said she plans to continue to be involved with the TWC and will apply to be an MPC Friend, a volunteer who helps run the Third World Transition Program and other TWC programs throughout the year.
"I'll still be a part of the program, just by virtue of how many of my friends who will be MPCs," she said.
The Third World Transition Program, which she attended last fall, "was my introduction to Brown," she said. It was a "once-in-a-lifetime" experience, she said.
"I probably never would have considered being an MPC had I not gone to TWTP," Wilde added. "I really like the idea of forcing people to think and talk about the 'isms' and pushing yourself to try to understand why society is the way it is."
Wilde went to TWTP after spending her senior year of high school in a rural town in southern Ghana.
"In that one year, I was able to think a lot and completely change the way I lived," she said.
Wilde was supposed to attend school there, but there was a teachers' strike during the first three months of her stay. Wilde taught English at an orphanage and helped her host family - a widow and her three young children - with housework.
"Most of my time was occupied in the house with my host siblings - playing with them, helping them with their homework, cooking and washing clothes," she said.
Wilde's experiences in Ghana shaped her thinking about race and class, but another aspect of her identity - her sexual orientation - remained a relatively minor factor in her thinking about the MPC application process.