This article was originally published for The Mostarian Current, UWC Mostar's student newspaper.

To travel is to choose. The sole decision of a place to visit constitutes an exercise of perfect discrimination, the apprehension of a single destination being a deliberate choice to ignore the nuances and ridges of all other fields one could know: as Autumn Break approaches, hundreds of friend-forming Split experiences will be left behind for story-writing Budapest trips or rakija-infused Sarajevo adventures. And, yet, we love to travel. There is nothing wrong about it, is there?

For sure not. In a school where the overall travel destinations of all its students most likely amounts to most of the countries in the world, reprobating travel would not only be a direct attack to the student body but also a deep critique of the sole idea of our school. However, the one day dedicated to embracing the values and ideas that bring together every single one of us seems like little more than that.

UWC Day, with its countless flags and its ever rumbling noise, is the spotlight of the year. Perhaps not in a metaphorical sense, but most definitely in a literal one: as per the Cambridge dictionary, a spotlight is “a lamp whose beam can be directed, or a circle of light produced by such a lamp”. To put something in the spotlight is like choosing a travel destination: an exercise of ignoring the rest of the realities and details of the scenario, another instance of the small discrimination acts we need to do in order to carry on with our lives.

And discrimination, per se, does not involve any negative connotations. When I choose to put pesto instead of ajvar on my toast, I am discriminating: after all, it is nothing but the practice of judging the quality of something based on similar things, to see the difference. Yet, the set of judgments and expectations that lead to one’s discriminatory choices has to be carefully chosen, plier-treated in order for it not to turn into the unfair discrimination that turns into pure mistreatment.

When I choose to travel to Istanbul instead of going to Amsterdam, I am making a choice based on a set of resources, realities and preferences that lead to a mostly fair decision -for myself. However, when we all collectively choose to reduce the mere essence of our national identities to flags and food, are we really being fair to our own identities and our collective essence as a school? 

Through the way that UWC Day currently works, as a flag-infused food feast, our national identities are not only recognized but also exacerbated. In the UWC Mostar Facts and Figures booklet available in the school’s website, there is a quote by Goran Batić that states that the school produces “citizens aware of the traps of the predominant nationalistic discourses in the country and across the globe”.

By standing in front of our flags, proudly wearing them as some sort of Roman wreath, we are not aware but, instead, victims of nationalistic discourses. UWC Day, in its atmosphere of union and fraternity, does nothing but put a veil under a dead bride. With every nationalistic hand sign thrown at flags crafted way before we were born, carrying meanings we can hardly grasp, we laugh at the very foundational ideas that are meant to make UWC Mostar the fabulous place it is meant to be.

If I was to base my impressions of the world on attending the 80 Minutes around the World event, I would not even understand the purpose of having something like a United World College. If every country is ajar with food and a haven of dance and happiness, why would I even travel for hours and hours to be in another one? Why unite our world at all, if we are doing so great by ourselves?

A summatory argument might be used to answer this question: we are so great by ourselves that we are even greater together. Following this argumentative line, the problems that arise with the idea of a united world are small next to the potential they bear. This is easily refuted by the essential failure of initiatives that are meant to bring people and nations together: yes, the fact that there is not a single UWC Day that goes without a flag dispute is an instance of it, but the abandonment ziggurats of every UN building are also a sad proof of it.

A reason why we should step forward and stop the idea of international integration as putting two flags next to each other. Imagining that the best we can do as a representation of the United World is to dance, eat and take pictures is reducing the years and years of history of this school to a questionable version of the infamous European Union barcode flag, but it is also an amazing sign of how much we can do right now.

First and foremost, we should stop ignoring the elephant in the room: politics. The opening paragraph of the very first document that led to the founding of UWC Mostar states that “The College will be a deeply political initiative”, and we seem to be drifting further and further away from an acknowledgement of it. Imagining international integration as a lot of dances is a political statement against a true implementation of it: if we all present our own, by ourselves, we are arguing against integration.

If being Latino, local, American or any other of the multitude of labels we seem to carry on our foreheads defines our engagement with the day that is meant to embrace the idea of our school, we are reducing the possibility of integration to a simple presentation. Not even a dialogue, just a joint statement. And, in reality, history shows that integration is an unpleasant process. For true integration to occur in the lightest of ways, at least years of dialogue need to take place: even within the European Union, for example, bitter disagreements are the order of the day in any of its organisms.

Yet, it works more or less well. But it does not work in spite of disagreements, but thanks to its public acknowledgement and proper channelling of them. For UWC Day to work, we have to stop smiling at flags and start questioning them: we have to zoom into each one of the stars that are in them and ask ourselves why they are there. When we look at foods, we have to ask ourselves why they are the way they are. The continuum of national identities and cultures is all about nuances, about the sharp edges of what we call ours and what we call theirs.

Asking ourselves why carrots are orange, why are Kebabs German or why do Colombians and Venezuelans call slightly different foods the same only to argue about who it belongs to does stir arguments, but it also allows us for an increased understanding of why our school is the way it is. Understanding Mostar, if such a mission can be achieved, is a rocky road.

And rocky roads cannot be just ignored. If one is to drive through them, we have to be mindful of the state of our tires and make sure that we are ready to go down and replace them if anything happens. If UWC Day is a solely pleasant experience, something is going wrong. Trying to make it so is what drives conflict.

Yes, we are different. Some of us want to travel to Dubrovnik, some of us want to go to Belgrade and some of us will just fly back home: that creates a sense of us and a sense of them, but it does not mean we have to abide by those labels as a guiding principle. I am Venezuelan, so my national identity is deeply connected to colonialism, but this does not mean I will cry at every single mention of a Spanish flag… because, oh well, I am also Portuguese. And my best friend is Brazilian.

We are not our countries, our dances or our food. Arguing for an idea of UWC Day that is based on individuality as the sole source of shared identity is ignoring the fact that our differences are not what brings us together and that we are not ambassadors of the places we come from. I am more than a Venezuelan flag or an Arepa filled with cheese from Travnik.

UWC is more than flags standing together and foodstuffs being actively stolen. It’s more about arguing and then hugging, about recognizing how much we can hate each other and actively choosing not to do so.