Life in the South has been markedly different from the rest of the country even before the introduction of the Mason-Dixon Line. As Theresa Crupi, a 20-year-old New York native, said, “Louisiana is unlike any other place in the country. Louisiana is southern, but is unique even in the South.”
In fall 2012, 15 percent of the nearly 30,000 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled at LSU were from out of state, and 5 percent were from another country. That means a fifth of the student body is in the process of acclimating to this culture.
International students have the opportunity to do so through the International Hospitality Foundation (IHF) at LSU, which concentrates its efforts into a Friendship Host program. Executive Director Virginia Grenier said the purpose of the nonresidential program is “friendship and intercultural understanding.”
Grenier said IHF organizes many events in order to assist the adjustment of the students to the South, like welcome events with jambalaya, Cajun music and dance instructors or a Mardi Gras ball theme. IHF even operates a loan closet of household goods with volunteers available to explain any objects.
If left to their own devices, it is easy for students from another country or state to be drawn into the media’s representation of the region. Crupi, a wetland sciences junior, described herself as one such student.
To prepare herself for life here, Crupi said she watched the HBO series “True Blood,” set in a fictional Louisiana town called Bon Temps, and listened to country music on the CMT channel. She said the media taught her that southerners were often poor and uneducated, but “somehow more wholesome and very religious.”
Assistant Professor Richard Doubleday from the Art Department believes these extreme stereotypes stem from “something remaining of the prejudices between the North and the South.”
A transplant from Boston, Doubleday said he had little trouble adjusting to Louisiana life. It wasn’t long after his move in August 2012, he said, that the startling novelty wore off.
Southern Drawl
Unlike Crupi, international student Rituparna “Ritu” Roy moved to Louisiana from Kolkata, India, when she was age 16, with limited knowledge of the southern United States.
Psychology senior Roy, now 20, doesn’t give the impression that she had ever felt out of sync here, but she found that the dialect of English in southern Louisiana was near unintelligible to her when she first moved here. Roy said she has always had an ear for languages, having learned five: Malai, Bengali, English, French and Hindu.
She said her British education at the Calcutta International School caused her to mix up Indian, British, American and Southern pronunciations of certain words, like economics (ek-uh-nom-iks, ee-kuh-nom-iks, etc.), making all the difference in her English comprehension.
Without a discernible accent herself, Roy had to struggle to understand the strain of southern drawl unique to the region. Roy described once asking a woman to repeat herself so many times on a work call that the woman, who happened to be African American, accused her of being racist.
Incomprehensible Louisiana accents are a common complaint among recent transplants. On a service trip in high school to New Orleans, Crupi could not understand a word from a fellow volunteer, a Baton Rouge man with a thick Cajun accent. This experience prompted her research of Louisiana culture through television and other media.
Business freshman Alexis Valet, who moved to Louisiana last year from Villiers-Charlemagne, France, said the dialect of Cajun French spoken in southern Louisiana often sounds like gibberish to him. Like Roy, Valet speaks several languages: French, English and German.
Valet, whose hometown is 3 hours away from Paris, said most of the things other international students may find shocking about southern Louisiana aren’t too different in France, but he said the amount of pickup trucks here still surprises him.
Doubleday said much the same of Boston, saying its version of rednecks are blue-collar, slightly less educated people with thick accents, dubbed “Joeys” and “Josephines.”
Southern Hospitality
The social behavior of Louisianans can seem strange or jarring. Roy said people in the South are surprisingly open with their lives, finding it appropriate to confess private details to a fellow bus passenger. She said no one asks in India how the other’s day is going in greeting or hugs each other hello and goodbye.
“People all of a sudden wanted to know how my day was and wanted to make awkward eye contact and exchange smiles,” Crupi said of being disoriented by the friendliness of southerners.
Crupi said she was unaccustomed to a pace of life leisurely enough to admit habitual, casual conversation with strangers. Reserved and cool, Crupi was startled by what she felt was a barrage of greetings in passing.
Professor Doubleday said the friendliness of people here won him over to LSU, motivating him to accept the teaching job. He called the students “respectful” and admires their easygoing relationships with each other.
The amount of space Americans have at their disposal affects the dichotomy of their social system. Instead of being packed tightly together like in other countries, Americans have the luxury of personal space.
Roy said the lack of personal space in India removes the need to be physically affectionate to those around you. In contrast, Americans are uncomfortable even with not leaving seats between each other, so they indulge in physical affection with close friends and family.
Shifts in Culture
The effect sprawl has on American culture only applies more severely to the typically rural southern United States, namely Louisiana. Crupi said she thinks the prevalence of festivals in Louisiana shows how much the communities need to be gathered together to socialize.
These events can bring new people together with the old, forging connections within the community. Doubleday frequents music events in downtown Baton Rouge. He said he and his wife “mingled with the locals and drank Abita beer,” enjoying the atmosphere.
Strange foods indigenous to the South take many by surprise. Crupi said she still can’t wrap her head around cracklins, which took her a while to identify as pork fat fried in fat. Besides alligator, Doubleday said he was taken aback by the general spiciness of Louisiana cuisine in comparison to the simplicity of the New England region.
The weak public transport system in Louisiana is a frequent point of frustration for recent and long-time residents alike.
Crupi, who, at 17, had never used her driver’s license past identification purposes in New York, said, “It was hard to wrap my mind around the fact that everyone has a vehicle, and that public transportation is so underdeveloped.”
Roy was struck from the first by the dependence on cars here in America. While visiting family in Houston, Texas, soon after her move to the States, she was surprised by their insistence to drive to the grocery store just across the street.
“I’d cross whole highways in India,” Roy said. “Some Americans would drive to their parked cars if they could.”
Adjustment
Despite any shocks, transplants consider their move to Louisiana a learning experience. Crupi even changed her major from biology to wetland sciences after a semester, determined to study something specific to the region.
Doubleday said a former colleague often asks, “How’s everything in Gatorland?” He usually replies, he said, with “beautiful and sunny.”
