High in the mountains of Guatemala during the early evening hours, eight first-year students sit under the fading sun with two professors listening to the story of Rigoberto, an ex-guerilla-fighter-turned-organic-coffee-and-banana farmer. A short time later, the students gather under the stars in the Santa Anita Cooperative’s coffee-drying patio after a home-cooked meal and cold showers to reflect on Rigoberto’s words.
The experience proved to be just one of many perspective-changing ones the freshmen encountered during the optional travel component of their fall WittSem course, “Making Coffee: Culture, Capitalism and Consumption.” After visiting coffee farms and plantations of every imaginable size and type, along with a diverse group of farmers, the students returned to campus with a deeper understanding of what they learned in the fall – a simple cup of coffee is not so simple.