Student exchange program swaps kids in red and blue states: ‘Changed my mind’ on stereotypes

It’s rare to hear a happy subway story.

But Brook Roozen has nothing but praise for her MTA experience.

“It was honestly a really surprisingly pleasant, safe experience,” she told The Post. ”I didn’t want to bring a bag because I was afraid that someone would steal it off my back while I was walking. I definitely thought it was going to be more dangerous than I felt like it really was.”

The 19-year-old from Flandreau, South Dakota, visited New York City in 2022 as part of the American Exchange Project, a social experiment that sends high-schoolers from around the US into worlds totally different from their own: Placing kids from red states in blue states or from big cities in rural areas.

Program alumni told The Post the experience opened their eyes to just how diverse America is, but also how much Americans all have in common.

“That was one of the most terrifying yet most beautiful and life changing experiences I’ve had,” Yenifer Abreu, a 19-year-old Brooklyn native who traveled to Palo Alto, California, last summer told The Post.

During their week of travel, students stay with local host families who bring them to community events and service opportunities.

Everything from airfare and meals to housing and local transportation is totally free, thanks to donors like the MacArthur Foundation and Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

Since its founding in 2019, AEP has partnered with 53 high schools in 31 states, from Urban Assembly Media High School in Manhattan to Muskogee High School in rural Oklahoma.

So far, more than 400 kids have taken part.

Roozen, who visited NYC during her senior year, grew up in a small, conservative South Dakota town where corn and cattle are major industries.

“It was kind of a situation where everybody knew who you were. My graduating class was about 35 people,” Roozen, who is now a sophomore at the University of South Dakota studying psychology, told The Post.

But, thanks to AEP, she found herself on an airplane in 2022 for only the second time in her entire life, flying to New York City.

“I’d never gone out of the state, and I knew that I’d probably never have the funds or opportunity to go anywhere like New York,” Roozen, the daughter of a UPS worker, said.

Her trip included crossing the Brooklyn Bridge — “surreal” — taking the subway to a Yankees game, a picnic in Central Park, a trip to the Statue of Liberty, a beach day at Coney Island and dinner in Times Square.

“Just being able to look up and see buildings going on forever was just unimaginable for me. I knew it could happen, but I just never saw anything like that,” she said.

In an age of polarization and division, AEP founder David McCullough III (grandson of the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the same name) says young Americans have more to learn from other parts of the country — and each other — than anyone expects.

“Division is the greatest problem we face,” McCullough, 29, told The Post. “So long as we’re at odds with each other, we can’t compromise and create progress.”

AEP was inspired by a road trip the Boston native took across the country — spending two months visiting places like Pine Ridge, South Dakota, Cotulla, Texas, and Cleveland, Ohio — while an undergraduate student at Yale in 2016.

“The friends I made changed my life and my mind,” he said. “The majority of American kids are growing up in very homogeneous communities, politically and socioeconomically. And this sort of travel experience helps us treat people as individuals and not as composite parts of groups that we’re stereotyping.”

Not only did AEP open Roozen’s eyes to urban life, it also opened her mind up to just how much she has in common with kids across the country.

And when she returned home, she met ZJ Schwartz, an AEP exchange student visiting South Dakota from Oakland, California.

“I was scared this kid from California was going to be all stuck up and not want anything to do with South Dakota culture, but he just totally changed my mind,” Roozen said.

Instead, the two say they became lifelong friends. “I definitely am way more open to understanding people now.”

Schwartz, a 19-year-old son of a consultant and a professor, hails from a wealthy zip code near San Francisco Bay, where tech is a dominant industry.

He heard about AEP through a history teacher and immediately knew he wanted to see the rest of the country.

“During family trips in other states, you usually just do the touristy things and stop for gas and get dinner. You don’t get to see what people do for fun. But I’m obsessed with seeing local perspectives,” he told The Post.

For Schwartz, who grew up in a Reform Jewish household that’s not overly religious, Brook’s hometown was unfamiliarly Catholic.

His host family, who had four children around his age, took him to mass during his trip.

“I had never been to church before. In fact, I only really knew Catholicism through the media,” Schwartz recalled.

He also visited the local native tribe, the Santee Sioux, who invited him to experience a religious drum circle.

The span of spiritual experiences in South Dakota spoke to him.

“I’ve been questioning my spirituality since that trip,” Schwartz said. “It’s just kind of opened my eyes to differing opinions about what lies beyond.”

Schwartz, nowa student of culinary arts at the Culinary Institute of America in upstate New York, loved South Dakota so much that he decided to go back this summer for his externship at a restaurant.

While all of his other friends were clamoring for gigs in buzzing urban centers, he was thrilled to return to the small-towncommunity.

“Everyone I told was like, ‘Where’s that? Why are you going there?’ But the regional cuisine and the experience is amazing,” he said.

“This country is an amazing place with a very difficult political history,” Schwartz said of his AEP experience. “It’s not easy to talk about that, but once we do, I think it becomes apparent that most people are on the same side. And going to South Dakota helped me realize that.”

Polling of the program’s students, conducted by Harvard researchers in conjunction with AEP, found that Brook and ZJ’s experience is common.

The researchers asked participants to rate their feelings toward those who agree and disagree with them on contentious political issues, both before and after their trip.

The experience made students believe those who disagree with them are significantly more moral, thoughtful and kind — and that those who agree with them were significantly less moral, thoughtful and kind.

Ronnie Spradlin, Mayor of Kilgore, Texas, is thrilled his town is an AEP destination, so much so that he makes his teen visitors honorary citizens of Kilgore.

He believes programs like AEP are exactly what America needs right now, and for the future.

“The different regions have vilified the other parts of the nation. We imagine other places as caricatures of themselves,” Spradlin, 67, who has been mayor of the conservative east Texas town for 14 years, told The Post. “I think that the division and the distrust increases with each generation now, and, unless we can stop that, we’re headed in a really bad direction.”

A week’s trip in Kilgore includes a performance by the Kilgore Rangerettes, skeet shooting, a ranch day at a cattle farm, dining “like a Texan” and a tour around the town with the mayor.

He says shooting is especially eye-opening for his visitors, who generally come from the Northeast or California: “These kids who had never even seen a real gun in their life were enjoying shooting guns, and it just violated every preconceived notion they had about firearms.”

Another surprise for the students, he says, is relative racial harmony down south.

“The kids from California and the northeast looked at kids here like, ‘Oh, y’all are supposed to hate each other. We heard that the blacks and whites didn’t like each other in the south,’” he said. “They were surprised that our races get along so well. They were led to believe that they’re segregated, and I don’t know where that comes from.”

AEP students say the friendships they forged during their trip will last a lifetime — like Gabby Smith of St. Ignatius, Montana, who went to Palo Alto, California, last summer.

Her trip included camping at Felton State Park, visiting Google’s headquarters and gorging on In-N-Out Burgers.

“I was surprised because I always thought California was, like, right on a beach, but it had a downtown city feel,” the 19-year-old nursing student and daughter of a schoolteacher said. “I got to see a culture I might never get to see again.”

Smith was roommates with Yenifer Abreu while on her AEP trip.

While Smith’s graduating class had just 23 students in it, Abreu is from another world entirely — Brooklyn.

“To be honest, the initial appeal was the sound of a free trip,” Abreu, 19, told The Post.

The Sunset Park native is the daughter of immigrants from the Dominican Republic.

Her mom works in a factory, and her dad at Walmart.

At first, she was wary of the people she’d meet in California, including the host family she and Smith stayed with.

“We were pretty different. Economically, they were in a better position than my family was,” Abreu said. “I went into California thinking everybody was gonna be, like, stuck up rich kids, but it was so cool to get there and see how down to earth and genuine these kids are. In a lot of ways, they were just like me.

“I realized some of the stereotypes we hold for people or cultures we don’t know aren’t really fair.”

Abreu and Smith are seemingly polar opposites. But when Abreu, who loves horses, found out that Smith grew up raising them on a ranch, the pair became fast friends.

“It was a super unexpected friendship. We come from completely different lives, but we bonded a lot,” Abreu recalled. “I learned there’s always at least one common thing with every person in this world if you’re open to talking.”

The pair are still in constant contact, 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 to her parents: “I realized I don’t allow myself to enjoy living here in the US as much as I should out of a sort of guilt because of how much my parents missed out on, coming here and always working as hard as they do.”

Looking forward to the next AEP cycle this summer, McCullough wants to help more kids bridge divides and forge love of country.

“My hope is that this experience becomes as normal in America as senior prom. It should be a public good.”