It’s not often you hear a fun story about the subway.
But Brooke Ruthen has nothing but praise for her MTA experience.
“Honestly, it was just an amazingly fun and safe experience,” she told the Post. “I didn’t want to carry my bag because I was scared that someone would steal it from my back while I was walking. I definitely thought it was going to be a more dangerous situation than it actually felt.”
The 19-year-old from Flandreau, South Dakota, traveled to New York City in 2022 as part of the American Exchange Project. This project is a social experiment that sends high school students from all over the United States into a world completely different from their own. From blue state states or regional metropolises.
Graduates of the program told the Post that the experience opened their eyes to not only how diverse America is, but also how much all Americans have in common.
“It was one of the scariest, most beautiful, life-changing experiences I’ve ever had,” Yenifer Abreu, a 19-year-old from Brooklyn, told the Post while visiting Palo Alto, Calif., last summer. told.
During the week-long trip, students stay with local host families who involve them in community events and service opportunities.
Thanks to donors like the MacArthur Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, everything is completely free, from airfare to meals to housing and local transportation.
Since its founding in 2019, AEP has partnered with 53 high schools in 31 states, ranging from Urban Assembly Media High School in Manhattan to Muskogee High School in rural Oklahoma.
More than 400 children have participated so far.
Ruthen, who came to New York as a senior in college, grew up in a small town in conservative South Dakota, where corn and cattle were the main industries.
“It was a situation where everyone knew who you were. There were about 35 people in my graduating class,” Ruthen, now a sophomore studying psychology at the University of South Dakota, told the Post. Told.
But thanks to AEP, she was able to board a plane to New York City for the second time in her life in 2022.
“I had never been out of state and I thought I probably wouldn’t have the money or the opportunity to go somewhere like New York,” said Ruthen, the daughter of a UPS employee.
Her travels include crossing the Brooklyn Bridge — “surreal” — riding the subway to a Yankees game, picnicking in Central Park, visiting the Statue of Liberty and visiting Coney Island. It included spending time at the beach and having dinner in Times Square.
“For me, it was unimaginable that I could look up and see a building that lasts forever. I knew it could happen, but I’ve never seen anything like it. I did,” she said.
In an era of polarization and division, AEP founder David McCullough III (grandson of a Pulitzer Prize-winning author) says young Americans are becoming more vulnerable to interactions with other parts of the country and each other than anyone expected. He says there is much to learn from him.
“Division is the biggest problem we face,” McCullough, 29, told the Post. “As long as we are at odds with each other, we cannot compromise and create progress.”
AEP is the story of the Boston native’s two-month road trip across the United States, visiting places like Pine Ridge, South Dakota, Cochula, Texas, and Cleveland, Ohio, in 2016 while an undergraduate at Yale University. was inspired by.
“The friends I made changed my life and my heart,” he says. “The vast majority of American children are growing up in communities that are very homogeneous politically and socio-economically. It helps you treat them as individuals rather than as composite parts of a group.”
AEP not only opened Ruthen’s eyes to city life, but it also opened her mind to how much she has in common with kids across the country.
When I returned home, I met ZJ Schwartz, an AEP exchange student visiting South Dakota from Oakland, California.
“I was worried that this kid from California was going to get stuck and not have anything to do with South Dakota culture, but he completely changed my mind,” Roozen said. said.
In fact, the two say they became lifelong friends. “I’ve definitely become much more open to understanding people.”
Schwartz is 19 years old, the son of a consultant and a professor, and comes from an affluent ZIP code near San Francisco Bay where the technology industry is a major industry.
He learned about AEP through his history teacher and immediately knew he wanted to see other parts of the country.
“On family trips to other states, we usually just do touristy things and get gas and eat dinner. We don’t get to see what people do for fun. But I’m obsessed with seeing the local perspective,” he told the Post.
Brooke’s Catholic hometown was unfamiliar to Schwartz, who grew up in a less religious Reform Jewish family.
His host family, who had four children around his age, took him to Mass during the trip.
“I had never been to church before. In fact, I only learned about Catholicism through the media,” Schwartz recalled.
He also invited us to visit the local Santee Sioux tribe and experience a religious drumming circle.
A long spiritual experience in South Dakota spoke to him.
“Ever since that trip, I have questioned my spirituality,” Schwartz said. “I feel like my eyes have been opened to different opinions about what lies ahead.”
schwartz now The Culinary Arts student at the Culinary Institute of America in upstate New York loves South Dakota so much that he decided to return this summer for a restaurant internship.
He was excited to return to his small town while all his other friends were eager to perform in bustling city centers. community.
“Everyone I talked to was like, ‘Where is that? Why go there? But the local cuisine and the experience is amazing,” he said.
“This country is a great place with a very difficult political history,” Schwartz said of the AEP experience. “It’s not easy to talk about it, but once you do, it becomes clear that most people are on the same side. Going to South Dakota helped me realize that. ”
A poll of students in the program conducted by Harvard University researchers in collaboration with AEP found that Brooke and ZJ’s experiences were similar.
The researchers asked participants to rate their feelings toward people who agreed with them and who disagreed with them on controversial political issues before and after the trip.
This experience led the students to believe that those who disagree with them are far more moral, thoughtful, and kind, and those who agree with them are far better. few Moral, considerate and kind.
Kilgore, Texas, Mayor Ronnie Spradlin is so excited that his town is an AEP destination that he has made the teenage visitor an honorary citizen of Kilgore.
He believes programs like AEP are exactly what America needs now and in the future.
“Different regions have denigrated other parts of the country. We imagine other places as caricatures of ourselves,” said the former mayor of a conservative East Texas town for 14 years. Spradlin, 67, told the Post. “I think there’s more division and more mistrust with each generation, and unless we can stop that, we’re going in a really bad direction.”
A week-long trip in Kilgore includes a performance by Kilgore Rangelette, skeet shooting, a ranch experience, a “Texas-like” meal, and a tour of the town with the mayor.
He says the shooting is especially eye-opening for visitors, who typically come from the Northeast and California. He said, “Kids who had never even seen a real gun in their lives were enjoying shooting a gun. It shattered every preconception they had about firearms.” ”
Another surprise for students, he says, is the relative racial harmony in the South.
“Kids in California and the Northeast looked at kids here like, ‘Oh, you guys must hate each other.’ In the South, blacks and whites hated each other. I heard it,” he said. “They were surprised that our species was so close. They had been led to believe that they were segregated, but I don’t know where that came from.”
AEP students, like Gabby Smith of St. Ignatius, Montana, who went to Palo Alto, California, last summer, say the friendships they make while traveling will last a lifetime.
Her trip included camping at Felton State Park, visiting Google headquarters, and eating In-N-Out burgers.
“I was surprised because I always thought California was right next to the beach, but it had a downtown feel,” said the 19-year-old nursing student and daughter of a schoolteacher. . “I got to see a culture that I might never see again.”
Smith was roommates with Yennifer Abreu during the AEP trip.
While Smith only had 23 graduates, Abreu comes from a completely different world: Brooklyn.
“Honestly, the initial appeal was the sound of free travel,” Abreu, 19, told the Post.
A native of Sunset Park, she is the daughter of immigrants from the Dominican Republic.
Her mother works in a factory and her father works at Walmart.
At first, she was wary of the people she met in California, including the host family she and Smith stayed with.
“We were quite different. Financially, they were in a better position than my family,” Abreu said. “I went to California thinking everyone was going to be stuck up, like all the rich kids, but it was so cool to get there and see how down-to-earth and genuine these kids were. In many ways, they were just like me.
“I realized that some of the stereotypes we have about people and cultures we don’t know aren’t actually fair.”
At first glance, Abreu and Smith seem to be polar opposites. However, when Abreu, who loves horses, learned that Smith raised horses on his ranch, the two quickly became friends.
“It was a completely unexpected friendship. We had very different lives, but we were very close,” Abreu recalled. “I learned that if you open up and talk about it, there is always at least one thing that everyone in this world has in common.”
The two still keep in touch regularly, and Abreu even attended Smith’s sister’s wedding.
Looking back on her trip, the Brooklyn native says AEP made her realize how lucky she is to be in America and how much she owes her parents. She should have done it out of some kind of guilt for how much she missed out on when her parents came here and always worked as hard as they did. ”
Looking forward to the next AEP cycle this summer, McCullough hopes to help more children bridge the gap and develop a love of country.
“My hope is that this experience becomes as common as senior prom in America. It should be a public good.”
