Museum exhibit focuses on relationship between BYU-Idaho students and community
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REXBURG — A traveling Smithsonian exhibit that focuses on how rural American communities have changed over time is now at the Museum of Rexburg, and staff is using the opportunity to highlight the relationship between Brigham Young University-Idaho students and the community.
The traveling exhibit, “Crossroads: Change in Rural America,” details the American rural experience. The exhibit is broken into six different features covering aspects of small-town life, such as “Community,” “Identity” and “Change.” Each feature includes interactive elements, from touchscreen video displays to flipbooks.
The sister exhibit spotlights changes Rexburg has undergone through time, with an emphasis placed on the friction between Rexburg residents and BYU-Idaho/Ricks College students.
The opening of “Crossroads” has invited locals to reflect on the growth, development and history of the Rexburg area, particularly times of tension between the city and the university.
“We wanted to show that the university and the town have always interacted, that they’re in a partnership and they need each other,” Museum of Rexburg curator Alisha Tietjen told EastIdahoNews.com.
Tietjen stressed Rexburg residents and students who come to BYU-Idaho are in a symbiotic relationship and not necessarily members of two factions that are in conflict.
“Once we become a resident of a town, which all students do within 30 days, our histories are now connected,” she said. “When you’re a student and you come to a town, you’re now part of that town and we’re making history together at that point. There is a relationship and it can be a building relationship. It doesn’t have to be ‘us vs. them.’ It can be together. It can be ‘us.’”
The exhibit illustrates this relationship between residents and students by highlighting times throughout Rexburg’s history when the two entities have had to rely on one another. This dependency was illustrated by events that unspooled during the Teton Dam Flood of 1976, when the then-Ricks College campus served as a shelter for residents displaced by the flood.
Such events demonstrate how much the city of Rexburg needs BYU-Idaho and vice versa. Tietjen said both Rexburg townspeople and BYU-Idaho students need to understand and appreciate this connection between the two entities to mitigate future conflicts.
“I think if we don’t figure out a way to collaborate together better, it’s going to severely divide the town,” she said. “It could have the potential of changing the feeling of our town, where now Rexburg is ‘America’s Family Community.’ If we don’t start working together a little bit closer and start seeing each other in a better light and that we are partners, then I feel that will cause that division to grow even wider.”
Both “Crossroads: Change in Rural America” and the Rexburg-centric exhibit provide an opportunity for anyone who wants to learn about these issues and appreciate the community Rexburg currently is.
“Crossroads” will run at the Museum of Rexburg from until April 17. Visit the museum’s Facebook page or website for more information.