What are university students’ sense of nationalism these days? How have the modern life and technology effected their nationalism? To find the answers to the questions, Dr. Akun and Wiwik Andreani made a large number of university students in Jakarta area write a poem in responding to certain issues.

Here is the abstract to the study that was published in 2017.

Educating Diversity, Understanding Ambiguity: Trailing Indonesian University Students’ Attitudes Through Instant Poems

Diversity actually is undeniable reality and Indonesia has the ideological concept of diversity imprinted in its national slogan as Bhinneka Tunggal Ika (Unity in Diversity). However, the real implementation of the slogan is still beyond expectation. The goals of this research are to trail university students’ attitude toward diversity based on their conceptual understanding of the national slogan, their daily exposure toward diversity, and to critically analyze their ambiguous attitudes toward diversity. The research was conducted in 10 universities all over Indonesia with 267 respondents from English Department students. The respondents were asked to write an instant poem on free diversity experience and answer a questionnaire distributed afterward. The result of the study has shown that despite the fact that most of the students have positive attitude toward diversity in their poem, with almost perfect conceptual understanding of the national slogan, most of them still have ambiguous attitude in a deeper level of their claim upon individual declaration as a (non)pluralist. It is suggested that restoration and transformation of perception on diversity through education, new acceptance of hybridity and redefined identity, by reimagining diversity as empowering, is essentially needed to change Indonesian diversity reality into unity and prosperity.

The full paper is available here: https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/asp/asl/2017/00000023/00000002/art00088 (Ed.)