Oliver Opoku is a business major from the Netherlands who participated in an international student panel on television with the mayor of Kent where GRCC has a city campus. Here he reflects on his television debut:

My name is Oliver Opoku and I’m international student from The Netherlands. As a Green River student I have been fortunate enough to be offered different opportunities and one of those was joining fellow students in a panel about diversity hosted on television by Suzette Cooke, the mayor of the neighboring community of Kent, which is not too far from where the main campus of Green River is located. I felt honored to be given this opportunity because it gave me a chance to meet the mayor and at the same I got to talk about matters that interest and concern me on TV. Alongside three other students and the dean of International Programs Wendy Stewart, I sat down with the mayor. We talked about diversity in Kent and ways to embrace the many different cultures and people that are present in the community. Meeting the mayor was an exciting and inspirational experience, because aside from asking us questions she also gave us insight on how important diversity is and how it can improve society. I’ll have to admit that at first I was nervous about being on TV but as soon we started it all went smoothly. I tried to really focus on what I was going to say at first but to my surprise the conversation was very informal. All of us just talked about who we were and where we were from and that on its own led to an in depth conversation about diversity.  I explained how I felt about interacting with different cultures and how important I think it is that you reach out to people outside of your environment. For me, interacting with different cultures at GRCC has taught me that It’s important to explore new things and different people because it makes you more open minded and diverse as a person.

When I first met the mayor I expected a warm and kind person, which she certainly is but at the same time she’s also very energetic and conversational. All together it was an amazing experience that helped me understand more about other people’s perspective of diversity in comparison to my own.