“It’s hard to put my finger on any single reason. I feel like a part of it is Milligan as a campus has changed and the students have changed. The trend of the tour has died down a bit.”
Dr. John Jackson
Milligan’s Humanities Tour has been a staple of the study abroad programs for years. For decades, Milligan students have taken full advantage of the opportunity to explore another country and expand their cultural palette. The most famous of these excursions is the annual Humanities Tour. Traditionally, students would spend one to two weeks exploring various European cities and learning about their history and culture. Students took this trip as a four-credit course in replacement of taking a semester of Humanities on campus. This has always been a popular feature of the school year. Historically, Milligan has faced the issue of not having enough spots for students. Unfortunately, this is no longer the case.
Professor John Jackson was the organizer of this year’s humanities tour and The Stampede sat down with him to get his comments about this year’s tour.
This year was the first time in Milligan’s history that the Humanities Tour has been canceled due to lack of involvement according to Professor Dr. Jackson. The only other time a trip was canceled was when the COVID-19 pandemic prevented it from happening. The original trip was scheduled for this May. This was due to a lack of student involvement. This is truly uncharted territory for a university whose identity is partially attached to its humanities program. The Stampede asked students why they didn’t participate in the Humanities tour or any other study-abroad opportunities. Students gave three popular answers: cost, lack of interest, and lack of advertisement and information.
The trip was scheduled to travel around Central Europe. Those places included Austria, Budapest Hungary, Poland, Prague, and Berlin Germany over 16 days. According to Jackson, that would’ve been the shortest trip to date. The trip cost $4,600 for each student to go, which is one of the lowest prices in the history of the trip.
“That would’ve been on lowest price tours we would’ve had in over 10 years. Most, if not all the tours have been over 5,000 dollars over the past 10 years” Jackson said.
Some students simply cited the cost as being too much for them. Higher education is expensive, and most undergraduates aren’t on a full scholarship. This puts students in tough situations between what they want to do and what they need to do.
“$4,600 was just a little more than I was willing to pay,” said Sophomore Kacey Webb. “It sounded fun, but I need that money for other things.”
This is just one of the sacrifices students expressed having to take on.
Dr. Jackson also cites an overall lack of interest on behalf of students.
“It’s hard to put my finger on any single reason. I feel like a part of it is Milligan as a campus has changed and the students have changed. The trend of the tour has died down a bit.” Jackson said. “We don’t have many students that have older friends, siblings, classmates, parents, that went on the tour and told stories about it to excite current studies to attend.”
Students also emphasized that they simply had better things to do regarding their academics.
“The Humanities Tour has never been on my mind. As a nursing major, I would rather spend my time doing things that could help my career like internships and clinicals.” said junior Patrica Chellah.
The last reason heavily discussed was the need for more information to be shared about the humanities tour compared to other years. Students said that they had heard brief announcements in humanities lectures, but it was mixed in with everything else they were learning and it didn’t stick. Some students wish that the school took more time to designate an opportunity for interested students to come and learn about the trip.
“Maybe we didn’t advertise right last year. That may have been a part of it. We usually advertise to freshmen, during their humanities classes,” sad Dr. Jackson. “We started advertising in March of last year, so a year and two months ahead of time [of the scheduled date]. We just need to make students more aware. We’ve seen the trend of smaller numbers for a long time.”
After researching, I found one page on Milligan’s website that had information about the humanities tour. It included the information for an informational meeting on Sept 6, 2023.
Professor Jackson expressed the disappointment he and the faculty felt after the trip couldn’t continue. Despite the cancellation this year he still thinks it’s a positive experience students should partake in.
“It allows them [students] to be in the physical spaces where things happen. They have read about a lot of places and seen pictures of art, but this is a good opportunity to see the art in person and the places that inspire it,” Dr. Jackson said.
Professor Michael Blouin will be directing next year’s Humanities Tour and students can look for information in the coming months.
About the author:
Evan Hayes is a sophomore from Memphis who wishes to help The Stampede in any way possible. He is a member of the Milligan track and Ffield team as a sprinter and plans to join more clubs as he continues at Milligan. He is a multimedia journalism major. He enjoys listening to music and staying active. After graduation, he hopes to go into the field of sports media.