At OU a special pumpkin carving promotes international friendships

A gathering for the OU Cousins program has been held at Jim Thorpe Multicultural Center on campus, on Thursday, Oct. 26. Young students from all over the world met their American friends enjoy together an evening where it took place one of the most typical American habits: the pumpkin carving.

The OU Cousins program was created in 1996 by President David Boren in order to promote and foster friendship and cultural bounds among American students and international students at the University of Oklahoma.

They are invited to submit their application for the program and successively, the schedule plans a Matching Party where all the students can look for the person who could be their cousin. If they don’t find him or here in that day, they can always rely on a special software that matches students according to their hobbies, majors, and countries of interest.

Not only they are invited to attend these social events punctually programmed, but they can also meet outside, in normal daily life.

On Thursday, students enjoyed free food and drinks and after that, they were given blades and various stencils to carve their own pumpkin with the shape they preferred. Then, pumpkins had been collected and disposed in a row on a table, in order to give the people the chance to name the best one. In each of them, students put some candles and after that the lights went off, they enjoyed the effects of the pumpkins glowing in the dark.

Isa Paglicci Reattelli, an Italian exchange student who is staying at OU for one semester, is happy for meeting again her American “cousin”:

“OU Cousins is a very interesting effort, it allows to know American students because usually international students tend to hang out among themselves,” she said. Plus, she found the pumpkin carving extremely funny since Halloween is not celebrated in Italy.

“These series of events promoted by OU Cousins is positive for the integration among cultures, unfortunately my university’s exchange program doesn’t offer these kind of things,” she said.

The next event will be the Traditional Thanksgiving Dinner, on Tuesday, Nov. 6, there American and international students will enjoy another typical moment of the American traditions. 

American students Robert Shoup and Karolina Koziol give their impressions about OU Cousins program and the Pumpkin Carving event.