BSC Administration Joins Educational Delegation
on Congressmen's Trip to Cuba
by Julie Santos Reardon, '91

Visitors to Cuba: Dr. Dana Mohler-Faria, President Adrian Tinsley and Mr. Frederick Clark, Jr., chairman of the BSC Board of Trustees.

Though it's just 90 miles off the coast of Florida, Cuba has seemed more than a world away from the United States for the past 40 years. The establishment of a communist regime under Fidel Castro resulted in the U.S. implementing an embargo against the country in 1960, and the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion and the 1962 missile crisis further contributed to the deterioration of relations between the neighboring countries.

But some U.S. political leaders, including Representative J. Joseph Moakley (D-Mass), are in favor of lifting the embargo. Representative Moakley has made several trips to Cuba, and recently led an educational delegation there including Bridgewater State College President Adrian Tinsley, Vice President for Administration and Finance Dana Mohler-Faria and Board of Trustees Chairman Frederick Clark, who directs Representative Moakley's Boston office. Representative James McGovern cohosted the trip.

BSC visitors found teacher education in Cuba similar to the United States.

"The purpose of the visit was to take advantage of the people-to-people program that President Clinton has opened up, and to see if it would be possible to develop exchange and collaborative projects with Cuban universities and university students," President Tinsley said during an interview after her return.

While in Havana, members of the delegation visited with a number high-ranking government officials, including the minister of health, the minister of higher education and the minister of culture and also visited the Union of Writers and Artists. Because of the strained relations between the U.S. and Cuba, there is no American ambassador in the country, but the delegation did meet with the Chief of the U.S. Interest Section in Cuba. They also visited the University of Havana as well as a primary school and the Pedagogical Institute, the teacher-training university in Havana.

"The programs for teacher education in Havana were just remarkably similar to the education programs here at Bridgewater," President Tinsley said.

Cuban students studying to become teachers take a five-year course of study, which is not necessary for students at BSC. However, like their counterparts here in Bridgewater, Cuban students also must complete student teaching in the schools before becoming certified.

The delegation also had the chance to get a sense of what every day life is like for Cubans, and both President Tinsley and Vice President Mohler-Faria said that the effect of the U.S. embargo against the country is apparent everywhere. The embargo has been even more keenly felt in the country since the fall of the Soviet Union, which, along with Soviet-bloc countries, had accounted for 70 percent of Cuba's trade.

"Now that that has collapsed, the economy of Cuba is really suffering," President Tinsley said.

Basic necessities such as food and soap are in short supply, she noted, and are rationed. Life in Cuba is very controlled, and because the poor economy caused so many people to move from the country to the city, citizens are no longer allowed to move without permission from the government. Dr. Mohler-Faria noted that the economy has forced highly trained professionals, including engineers and doctors, to take low-level jobs in the tourism industry because the dollars that fuel that industry ensure a higher pay than they could earn in their professions.

School children await the start of another school day in Havana.

However, Dr. Mohler-Faria also said Cuba does not have the vertical economic structure found in America. He said he didn't see any homeless people during the visit, and noted that all Cubans have free medical care. And, despite the economic difficulties that have resulted from the U.S. embargo, both President Tinsley and Vice President Mohler-Faria said the Cuban people were very friendly to Americans.

"We were treated with great friendliness and openness from the top right on down," President Tinsley said. "Cubans we met on the street were very friendly."

Mr. Clark agreed that Cubans were very friendly, and said he was surprised by the friendliness because "Cuban people have not had a lot of good experiences with the United States in recent years." The educational delegation to Cuba was the first visit to the country for all the participants from BSC, including Mr. Clark.

"I was fortunate because I got to go to Cuba wearing two hats - a congressional hat and a Bridgewater trustees hat," he said.

He said trips such as this one are an important step toward improving relations between the two countries.

"It's easy to misunderstand people that you've never met," he said. "Part of the purpose of this delegation was to bring people together to see that we have a lot in common."

President Tinsley hopes to see the colleges and universities who participated in the delegation form a consortium that will develop exchange projects with Cuban universities and artists. One proposed project in the near future would be a cultural festival in Boston within the next two years that would feature emerging Cuban artists. Student and faculty exchanges are also a possibility in the future.

"They have a great culture down there, and we have a great culture here," Mr. Clark said. "We should be learning more about each other."