TEXT Project Wins John A. White Award

The TEXT Project, an oral history program at The University of Arkansas designed to record the stories of the elderly Tibetans living in India, was awarded the John A. White Award for Faculty Student Collaboration on Aug. 22 at the Academic Convocation. The founders and directors of The TEXT Project, professor Sidney Burris and Geshe Dorjee, were on hand, along with their students, to accept the award.

One of the unique features of this oral history project concerns the work done by Arkansas students: each of the 15 students is part of a production team in charge of designing, recording and editing the interviews conducted in the refugee settlements in India. As a result, Arkansas students are themselves on the front lines of an important act of cultural preservation.

The TEXT Project is accordingly having a profound affect on the students selected to participate in the program. Megan Garner, who returned twice to India, had this to say: "The TEXT Project changed my world view. I'm currently working to get into graduate school, ... and at a time when I had no idea what I was going to do after I graduated, I was given a huge gift by The TEXT Project: clarity and purpose."

"Our purpose," Burris said, "has always been two-fold: first, we wanted to help the Tibetans tell their stories because these are stories that arise from a culture and tradition that are quickly vanishing; but second, we also wanted our students to find themselves at the center of the Tibetan struggle, if only for a summer, because we believed that it would have a dramatic effect on their sense of community and ethical responsibility as they take over the reins of a century that will demand both of these qualities in abundance if we are indeed to survive it."