Hi, all! My name is Cyrus Mooney and I am a second year part time CSSA student at Oregon State. I also work as a professional in the Recreational Sports Department on the Corvallis campus as an Operations and Membership Coordinator. Since I have been at home more, my partner and I have picked up a few new hobbies including at home projects for our house, trying out new recipes from cultures we are not familiar with, and an extensive streak of board games. Our master record for Yahtzee at this point is 107 to 98 (she is winning of course). I also completed my undergraduate degree at Oregon State in Business Administration, so I have lived in the Corvallis/Albany area since 2013. Before that, I lived in a suburb of Portland called Sherwood, where both my partner and I’s parents live currently and where we met in high school. My wife attended the University of Oregon and we greatly enjoy visiting Eugene so the trip down I-5 in one we willingly make often. Our hobbies include finding new venues and cities where we can unwind and disconnect from our current society.
I am a multiracial man whose parents are from very different parts of the world. My mother was born and raised in Bombay, but now named Mumbai, India while my father was born and raised in the United States in Wyoming. My mother is the youngest of three sisters and grew up comparatively upper middle class in her society, and my father was raised in an impoverished home in the country plains. My mother’s family made the choice to migrate to the states for her and her sisters to pursue higher education, which is where my parents crossed paths at San Jose State City College. My father had a troubling childhood, dealing with abuse by his parents and lasting implications of drug use and mental illness. This carried over into how I was raised and still impacts my family today. My father is a white male that was eager to inherit the spiritual and religious practices that my mother and her family practiced, which was a large component of my childhood. The religion that my family observes is called Zoroastrianism, and originates from Persia. While I do not identify as a practicing Zoroastrian, I do find that the values within the religion are extremely meaningful and contribute to my philosophies of spirituality, with the main takeaway from the religion being “Good Thoughts, Good Words, Good Deeds” or “Manashni, Gavashni, Kunashni.”
My history largely impacts how I show up within this community. At first glance, most people do not realize that I am dual-racial, and are quick to assume that I come from a solely white background. This has been something that I have enabled in the past and is at times difficult for me to be outward about. In an effort to conform to a majorly white society, I conditioned myself to disregard components of my background that contribute to who I am as a person. Through my academic career in higher education I have acknowledged this and am working on ways that I can be confident in my various identities and learn more about my intrinsic feelings about them. With that being said, being a multicultural individual has given me perspectives that appreciate diverse cultures and show empathy towards acts of systematic oppression and racism that impact folks in our society. I know that there is much work that I need to do to grow in this component of my life but am grateful that my upbringing exposed me to different ways of life.
