In college, I had a classmate who joined our journalism club from Laos. The colleague was slightly awkward, and we could tell he felt uncomfortable speaking to the club leadership. He frequently made rude comments because he never understood how he could speak with other students or club leaders about his cultural beliefs. This student was also not comfortable with hand gestures and too much revealing clothing used by club members. Students in the club avoided speaking or hanging around with him due to some of his behaviors and beliefs that they thought were awkward. However, he was good at activities and events discussions, but he was afraid to make choices on the dress code when there was an event in our club. He was too scared to make choices that could make others feel bad. However, club leaders were aware of how he was uncomfortable with dress code choices, so, on many occasions, he was allowed to make his choice of dress code that he felt was good for him. He was later elected as a vice-chairperson of the club, which affected most of the club decisions because he looked at every event on his cultural backgrounds. He ended up been thrown out of the club due to his rudeness and insensitive comments against other cultures.
How communicators exhibit some dimensions described in this article
People from Asia usually have indirect ways of communicating with other people. The majority of them prefer to establish a relationship with other people before they would ask them for other things, such as engaging in business. By establishing the relationship, Asian tries to conform to the group so as not to disrupt the group (Hahn & Molinsky, 2017). The student needed to have reached the school management or student leaders and let them know how he felt about the dressing code in the journalism club. However, he was too worried about getting ashamed or landing into trouble. When students learn a problem or an unbecoming behavior in college, the best way is to address the issue through school management. As an Asian, most likely, he was afraid to admit that his culture does not accept too much revealing clothing due to the fear that he was a minority student in college, and that would land him into trouble with other students.
What could have been done differently to improve the communication
In retrospect, some things could have been done differently to improve communication. First, the head or the chairperson of the journalism club should have reached him and explained to him the dress code of the club in different events. Instead of pushing him out of the club for his communication style, it was important if he was shown the meaning of the dress code used in the club in different events, and the decision to use those clothing (Harvey & Allard, 2015). Secondly, the student needed to have communicated with the club chairperson about the issue before making public comments about it. Through explaining to the chairperson about how he was uncomfortable with the dress code, he would have been given some light on why it was happening.
Furthermore, he could have been advised to join other clubs where the dress code was not an issue for him. Finally, the student was fearful and shy about raising issues that concerned his culture. He was unable to speak about issues that could have been fixed by the management easily. Unfortunately, the journalism club was uncomfortable with his unbecoming behavior, and the best thing was to let him leave the club. In the future, I hope colleges would develop policies that will help such students raise their concerns and live in college with people from diverse cultures comfortably.