Crimson and Gold Connection; Dr. Grant Moss/Dr. Harriet Bachner

Welcome to Crimson and Gold Connection, keeping you connected with the people and current events at Pittsburgh State University. Welcome to this week's episode of the Crimson and Gold Connection on 89.9 K-R-P-S. I'm Fred Fletcher-Fierro. The Bufat Bufat Cultural Simulation is being held on campus of Pittsburgh State University on Thursday, April 5th. The event is taking place inside both the Governor's and Heritage Room of the Overman Student Center here at Pitt State. Joining me this week to fill us in and all the details of the simulation are Pitt State Professors, Dr. Grand Moss, and Harriet Bokter. Thank you both for coming into our studios. It's a pleasure to be here with you. Yeah, thank you for having us. So what is the Bufat Bufat Cultural Simulation all about being held here at Pitt State?

Bufat Bufat has been developed as a cross-cultural simulation so that people can have a sense of what it's like to be able to function in a culture that they have no understanding of. So what happens, we have two cultures, two cultures that are unique. They're not a replica of any current cultures, really. And the students' participants are divided into one or the other culture and learn about their culture in a relatively short period of time and actually become very connected to their culture. In fact, they start seeing the other culture through their own lands only after a half an hour. So it's really quite an amazing experience. And the two of us, we try to build up the students from the very beginning and say, oh, you're with us. You're part of the chosen group and we really ham it up a little bit, you know, to try to show that in our own culture, we believe we're a chosen group.

And so then throughout the whole culture simulation, we send some of our members over to the other culture and they interpret that culture through the lands that they've achieved in the beginning culture. So the participants have an opportunity to learn about their culture and then they go to visit the other culture and observe for a while and come back and give their perceptions about what is going on in that other culture. All the while they are beginning to feel that our culture is so much better and how we operate than that other culture. That other culture is so weird. We don't really understand what the world is going on there, how strange they are. So it's just an amazing kind of phenomena that happens in this relatively short period of time. In addition, they begin to have a sense of how we are so inculturated in our own culture that it is really hard to see the value in other culture's practices.

So this is a very interactive sort of thing. If you show up, it's not going to be a passive activity. No, no, it is not passive at all. In fact, from the very good go, we separate friends that come in, we see them, we put them into different groups knowing that they're going to have to go and see their friend and the other culture and you're expected the whole time to be participating. Now, at the end, what's really neat is we have a little debrief that we discuss the feelings that you felt during the simulation, other types of reactions to the other culture, your own culture, and that's when the real meaningful learning happens. So at the beginning, where they're participating heavily in the cultures, and then they go and visit the other culture, sure, I mean, you have to be there and you're always talking to the people that are there if you can or interacting with them. But then at the end, the most important thing for us is the debrief, and that's where the real, quote, participation begins, right? Because they're realizing, oh, they were feeling the same thing. I was feeling even though we were from different cultures, and so that's, yeah, it's not a

passive thing at all. You're not just sitting there going, hmm, I wonder what's going to happen with that other group. No, no, you're actually, you're sent over, you're participating with them and you're participating with your own cultures. I can imagine that creates some awkwardness at times. It takes them maybe a little while to warm up. I mean, and that's why Dr. Moss and I are very animated in the whole process because we want that to be contagious so that they too become very, very much participatory and active in their roles in the culture. The debriefing, like Dr. Moss said, is really the crux of this whole simulation in that they begin to, I guess, internalize and understand how it is that they form certain perceptions about people from other cultures and how sometimes unfair it can be in terms of our perceptions of other cultures.

So when they are debriefing, they are considering their feelings and considering the feelings of the participants from the other culture as well and seeing that while we may have had some misunderstandings, some judgments about the other culture that's not quite true. And what's even better about that debriefing that I need to add is they share the same experience or when they talk about how they felt in the other culture or how they felt in the internal culture, we list a bunch of adjectives or phrases or whatever that they mentioned and oftentimes those on both sides, those lists are the same. So we're comparing the feelings we felt in these other cultures, which is really meaningful for any type of cultural simulation, right, or even when you go to another culture. And then what's really what I wanted to mention too that's really neat about this simulation is in a matter of half an hour, you're already thinking like this fake culture that we've created or these two fake cultures we've created.

And so it's really quite amazing because then we say, oh, by the way, how older you now in your own culture, now that's how many years you've got in your mind that tripled or quadrupled or et cetera, how much that cultural bias you have has affected you. What are some of the changes that you've seen on students or as a student come up to you after or emailed you a week later and say that, that's simulation, that changed my mind, that changed my perspective. It happens to me every semester. In fact, last time we did this last semester, as students said, that was one of the neatest things I've ever done because it made me think about all of these biases that I have in for my own culture. Now granted, that's what I do for a living. I teach language and culture. And so he was like, I never realized I put two to two together that what you were doing in your class, I'm learning language about language and culture that's not my own is exactly what the simulations provided for me. So I mean, I could talk about hundreds, maybe, of different emails or just conversations I've had because of the simulation.

It's really powerful. I was speaking with Pittsburgh State University Professors, Dr. Graham Moss and Dr. Harriet Pockner. They are the organizers of the Buffon Buffon Cultural Simulation being held at Pitt State on Thursday, April 5th inside of the Overman Student Center. The event is open to the public. To learn more, visit pitstay.edu and search Spring 2018 Buffon Buffon. Join us for Crimson and Gold Connection Wednesdays at 8.50 and Fridays at 350.