Campus Tour Guides: Dipping My Toes into a Sea of Cultures

Campus tour guides are hard to miss. We come in swarms like locusts, “Follow me!” embroidered across our shoulder blades in yellow print. Our voices swell with school pride as they bounce over the Pentacrest and down Iowa Avenue. High schoolers and their parents trail in our wake of historical facts and student statistics, listening for a reason to attend our University over all the others.

Around 80% of these students will be accepted into the University of Iowa, but only a fourth of those accepted will actually attend, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Our job as tour guides is to convey a diverse and welcoming community; we share our campus’ culture in hopes that it will entice students to enroll. And during each hour-and-a-half long tour, we get a sneak peek into the cultures of individuals whose worlds are wildly different than our own, learning more about ourselves from every brief encounter.

Tarek was a Fulbright teaching assistant from Tunisia who signed up for an international student tour during the summer of 2019. When I met Tarek, I embarrassed myself by not knowing where Tunisia is on the globe. In my ignorance, I characterized his straight, coffee-colored hair, large hazel eyes, and light complexion to be of eastern European descent. Turns out, Tunisia is in northern Africa, right on the Mediterranean Sea. I swallowed my tongue and listened as he described the stark contrast between the paradisiacal coast of Kelibia and the sea of Iowan corn fields.

Tarek challenged my training. As a tour guide, I am prepared to answer tough questions; I know from training and personal experience that there are over 500 student organizations at Iowa, that 18% of students are involved in Greek life, and that Hawkeye football games give a better rush than any drink or drug. Tarek didn’t care about these tidbits of information; rather, he inquired about cultural events hosted by the University. Tarek told me that through his brief encounters with other cultures, the way he perceived his own culture evolved and the way he communicated with others improved. America, Tarek said, was like nowhere he had ever been before. He had never experienced such a melding of cultures and lifestyles; he had never witnessed a more drastic cultural transition than driving between American cities.

It took every bit of self-control that I had to not laugh in Tarek’s face. I didn’t think Tarek would find much diversity at Iowa; rather I knew that 74% of the University’s 34,000 students are white, according to the National Center for Labor Statistics. After the tour, Tarek friend-requested me on Facebook, and as I scrolled through his feed, I was left swallowing my tongue yet again. His six-month trip to Iowa was packed with cultural experiences. He went to an American baseball game, Iowa City’s Latino Fest, and Iowa City’s Pride Parade. He traveled to Des Moines, Delaware, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., and New York City. His posts included other Fulbright scholars, a group of wildly intelligent individuals from dozens of countries and ways of life.

While Tarek dipped his toes into a sea of cultures, I scrolled through his Facebook and thought about what he said on our tour. Was I engaging with other cultures? Were other students broadening my worldview? Was I reflecting on my own cultural identity?

I thought about my tour with Curtis, a high schooler whose Purdue alumni parents wore face masks bedazzled with their alumni Greek letters, practically singing their loyalty to Purdue. Curtis, however, was already sporting Iowa colors, his bright yellow “Hawkeyes in Business” shirt clashing with his parents’ dark gold apparel. During the tour, Curtis kept his head low and silently observed the predominantly white campus. At the end, the other families wandered toward their respective cars, heads tucked into their maps of downtown Iowa City, but Curtis approached me with a spark of interest in his eyes. “You didn’t mention diversity on campus. Do you even have a Black cultural center?” he said.

I hesitated for a moment, searching for the name of the cultural center specifically founded by and for Black students. “Afro House!” I remembered, the center’s nickname all I could recall about the organization. He smiled and thanked me, but the spark of interest had faded, and I could tell he was disappointed that I didn’t know more about their resources or how they made Black students feel welcome on campus. I realized then that while my knowledge of the University was abundant, it lacked in information outside of my own culture.

Brad Holland, a third-year student and tour guide coordinator, said he had a similar experience with a mother whose questions about the LGBTQ community caught him off guard. “I panicked, and I said, ‘Uh, I don’t know, I’m gay.’ That experience tapped into a part of my identity that I wasn’t prepared to talk about,” he said.

This wasn’t the first time that working as a tour guide encouraged Brad to reflect on his identity. Brad, who identifies as white and Latino Mexican, grapples with an ongoing internal struggle to understand and accept his identity. When he opened up to a touring Puerto Rican family about this struggle, they validated that he should not be afraid to identify as Latino and that they related to his advice for Latino students.

“Being a tour guide has opened up conversational doors,” Brad said. “No matter what culture you’re from, you’re open to communicating and making a human connection. Now I can talk to people from literally all over the globe. You’re taking your own perspective and identities and trying to shift them toward your group so you can relate to them.”

Sarah Hager, a third-year student and tour guide, agrees with Brad. “It’s a lot easier to connect with people that are a little bit different than you than I expected,” she said. “Even if you’re having a hard time sharing your story with people, sharing the positives can change your perspective of your life so much.”

Known among tour guides for her outdoorsy style and good-natured sense of humor, Sarah has not always felt confident in her own skin. In fact, she said that when she came to college, she felt isolated and disconnected. She applied to be a tour guide in hope that it would connect her to the University and expand her community on campus. “Giving tours played a huge role in helping me realize that there are so many different people around you and everyone has their own unique identity,” she said. “The important part of your identity is your personal experience - how you are telling your personal stories in way that can connect with people.”

I applied to be a tour guide when I was a first-year student, fresh to college and ignorant of the expansive number of cultures around the world. My high school was predominantly white, even more so than the University of Iowa. In fact, I was impressed at Iowa’s diversity when I came to campus. Now, three years later, I am thankful for the fact that Iowa’s lack of diversity does not impress me. I am grateful that being a tour guide has broadened my perspective of the real diversity of the world and deepened my connection to my own culture.

“We give tours to everybody. When we can see within ourselves that there are many different viewpoints to how the world is viewed, we can then be more helpful. Understanding those viewpoints helps us be better at interacting with others,” said Sabrina Tapps-Fee, who was the assistant director of admissions at the University of Iowa for 13 years. She believes that the tour guide program has helped students see outside of their own cultural bubble. Popping that bubble allows students to communicate more effectively with prospective Hawkeyes, she said.

Tarek and I saw each other for a second time at Iowa City’s Latino Festival. He was sitting on a Pedestrian Mall bench eating mango with Tajín spice and Chamoy sauce, so focused on a pair of salsa dancers that he didn’t notice the crimson sauce dripping on his khaki shorts. I bought Mexican Elote - street corn – from a local vendor and sat next to him.

I couldn’t believe that after my two years at Iowa, I had been missing out on the food, dancing, and cultural learning offered by the Latino Festival. If it hadn’t been for my interaction with Tarek, I never would have gone. But there we were, an American and Tunisian, marveling over the vivid colors of Mexican papel picado and the 2-foot-tall masks of the traditional costumed dancers in the smack middle of corn-country Iowa.

Tarek, like many other touring students, had given me a brief glimpse into an unfamiliar culture. His cultural awareness encouraged me to reflect on my own identity and improve the ways in which I relate to others. Not only can this enhance the experiences of the 30,000 people that tour the University of Iowa every year, but it will also help me to individually communicate with people who have cultures profoundly different from my own – enriching my own life in the process.