November 2006

Protesting presence

A sea of protestors holding white, wooden crosses stretched for nearly a quarter mile as more than 20,000 voices cried "¡Presente!" in unison. The crosses were part of a mock funeral procession that took place two weekends ago during the annual vigil to close the School of Americas -- renamed in 2001 the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. More than 50 UD students and staff clad in green shirts, including myself, arrived after the eight-hour bus ride to Columbus, Ga. We listened to the stories of torture survivors, activists and musicians at a Saturday rally that concluded with a puppetista parade with giant puppets, drum lines and dancers. In contrast, Sunday's procession was sobering. Each individual was handed a cross representing a person who died at the hands of an SOA graduate, and each name was read allowed by an announcer on stage. My heart sank when I received my white cross that read "Jesus Claros - 10 años." As this boy's name was declared, the crowd and I replied, "¡Presente!"

by Anna Sexton ’07 11-30-06

My Old House: 417 Irving

They have a cellar out of The Wizard of Oz and a fish named Robert Duvall. Click the image for a look inside 417 Irving.

by Matthew Dewald 11-20-06

The ubiquitous American ball cap

Last Wednesday, I vicariously traveled to France, Spain, Austria and about a dozen other countries through students' stories at a study abroad panel discussion.
The discussion -- one of many "Citizens of the World" events happening this month -- featured three American students who had taken part in UD's study abroad programs as well as students from France, Puerto Rico and Pakistan who are studying abroad at UD.
After drying off from the evening's rain and learning to pronounce each other's names, the students described their memories of and reasons for studying abroad. American student Ashley Woehrmyer, a senior Spanish major, valued the language skills she developed in Spain as well as opportunities to view Spanish art.
"A painting in a textbook can never compare to being in its native country and standing right in front of it, actually seeing the brushstrokes," she said.
Nothing the world 'round can compare to the informality of American dress, the international students agreed.
"When I started school here, I couldn't believe that students wear baseball caps to class -- that's something you would rarely see where I am from," said Philippe Dubost of Nice, France, who, like all the panel's students, wore jeans but no ball cap.

by Caroline R. Miller ’07 11-20-06

So many ways to say ‘Merry Christmas’

More than 1,000 UD students have already “adopted” area children for Christmas on Campus, and they've all been writing postcards to the children with whom they'll share COC Dec. 8. Here's just a sample:
· "Merry Christmas. I can't wait to do fun games and activities with you. Also, we get to meet Santa Claus!"
· "I am so excited to meet you and have lots of Christmas fun!"
· "We can play games, make cookies, build snowmen, have snowball fights, and have hot cocoa! It will be a lot of fun! I can't wait until the snow comes. I hope you are excited for Christmas too!"
COC expects to collect postcards for about 1,450 children, said junior Liz Nahrup. As one of three adoption co-chairs this year, she's continuing a family COC tradition -- two of her cousins are past coordinators.

by Matthew Dewald 11-17-06

My Old House: 1306B Brown St.

Three seniors gave up better housing lottery picks to room with two friends who are juniors. Click the image for an inside look at the place they call home.

by Matthew Dewald 11-16-06

Songs of contrast

Lee Hoffman and David Sievers, adjunct professors of voice at UD, promised that "The Tragic Gap," the production they mounted last weekend at the Opera Workshop, would make the audience think. "At the very least, we want them to be moved. We want the work to touch them," Sievers said.
It did. The production, based on a concept from Parker Palmer's book A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward An Undivided Life, featured 15 talented students. I couldn't help but be struck by soprano Shannon LaRue, a junior music performance major, who sang Rosalinda's familiar "Csardas" from Johann Strauss's operetta Die Fledermaus. Typically, Rosalinda, disguised as a Hungarian countess at a lavish masked ball, sings a traditional folksong, extolling the sounds of her homeland. The aria, with its show-stopping vocal pyrotechnics, is a traditional New Year's Eve staple, performed in opera houses from Vienna to New York.
What a contrast to hear it sung on a bare stage in Sears Recital Hall in a setting evoking a soup kitchen and free store. A homeless Rosalinda, clad in a hooded sweatshirt, shivers in the morning chill and remembers the warmth of the homeland she lost. The joy of life in her song temporarily transports her and the audience beyond the bleakness of her present reality.
It was a moment when the audience could, in fact, stand in the tragic gap that Parker described "between the way things are and the way we know they might be."
This weekend, one of the professors takes a turn on stage. Soprano Lee Hoffman will sing Schumann's Frauenliebe und Leben at the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra Classical Connections concert at 8 p.m. Friday, Nov. 17, at the Schuster Center.

by Deborah McCarty Smith 11-16-06

'Tiospaye' and handprints

Mixing paint and laying out paintbrushes, first-year student Kelly Fine prepared for Tuesday evening's Circle of Light diversity club mural project. She explained the mural as a form of unity in tribal life, and its painting is part of the weeklong, student-initiated Native American Awareness Week.
Grade school students from Dayton's East End Community School also shared their artistic talents. Splotches of red and brown, dabbled drips, and handprints adorned a large stretch of canvas to be taken during a spring breakout trip to the Lakota tribe of Standing Rock Reservation in South Dakota.
Circle of Light, established at UD in 2000, focuses on bridging cultures and the inclusion of underrepresented communities. Communication lecturer and group founder Mary Anne Angel used the Lakota word for extended family, "tiospaye," to describe the ties between the reservation and Circle of Light, which supports a community and cultural center there. "There is no difference in adoptive and blood relatives in Native American culture," she said. "It's really about creating extended family, recognizing gifts and resources that we all have."
The week's activities continue at 7 p.m. tonight with a potluck at 424 Stonemill Road and at 7 p.m. Thursday with the film Black Robe in Sears Rectial Hall.

by Johnnie C. Kling ’09 11-15-06

My Old House: 217 Kiefaber

Here on UDQuickly, we're bringing back an old Web gem: My Old House, a look at the neighborhood houses and the students who call them home. Click the image to step inside 217 Kiefaber, and check back to see whose fridge we'll be peeking in next time.

by Matthew Dewald 11-14-06

Images in waves

It was a deluge of creativity last week in the Rike Center. Blue and purple water droplets chased each other across the entryway wall. Water flowed under a wooden bridge. Pottery mimicked objects tossed up by rushing water.
The Friday exhibit was the culmination of an immersion project focused on a theme: rivers. Faculty canceled classes last week to allow all visual arts majors to create works individually or collaboratively, using whatever media they desired.
Jayne Matlack Whitaker said the faculty committee, including herself, Judith Huacuja and Suki Kwon, decided on the river in part because of opportunities for continued learning on the theme. "On campus, we have people who can fuel the topic beyond visual arts," she said.
Students met Nov. 3 to learn about the immersion project. They also got a river primer from biology professor Brother Don Geiger, S.M., and Emily Klein and Anne Crecelius, student coordinators for UD's Rivers Institute.
Junior Kelly Bodner took the weekend to plan her project, and worked through the week to manipulate stock photographs to explore colors and action related to water. She laid individual images on top of an acrylic canvas painted with an aerial image of a river system. "I was trying to brainstorm the concept of raindrops," she said.
This is the fourth year for immersion week, spearheaded eight years ago by department chair Fred Niles. Past themes were time, the book and flight.
The art — displayed Nov. 10 for only five hours — has already been swept away. To see some of the works, click here.

by Michelle Tedford 11-13-06

Exporting the ADA

America exports pop culture, democracy -- and disability civil rights -- to the world.
''Idealistically, we thought we could export democracy to Iraq. The war there shows just how hard it can be,'' observed National Public Radio correspondent Joseph Shapiro during a Diversity Lecture Series talk on campus Nov. 8. ''We've been much more successful at exporting disability civil rights. … Now other countries are looking at the ADA (Americans With Disabilities Act) and passing their own versions.
''It's a very American thing to say that a group should be protected by civil rights laws. But disabled people all around the world -- in rich countries, and even the poorest countries -- are saying our problems are not medical, they're problems of needing civil rights."
About 300 faculty, staff, students and community members -- including a few arriving in wheel chairs -- came to hear Shapiro, who covers health, aging, disability, and children and family issues for NPR.
He painted a vivid portrait of the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, which had turned into a field hospital following Hurricane Katrina. ''This is the image that sticks with me -- an airport concourse filled with hundreds and hundreds of people in wheelchairs. Or lying on the floor in stretchers. People who were elderly, sick, disabled, confused."
Not all the elderly fit the Mick Jagger mold. ''We celebrate, as we should, people who show you can still be a Rolling Stone at 62,'' he said. ''But the dangerous flip side of that is that we've also adopted the 'no prune face' rules. We don't want to think about the other way some of us will face old age."

by Teri Rizvi 11-13-06

Socks without partners

Even Erma would have chuckled.
Tim Bete, director of UD’s Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop, presented Dayton Daily News columnist Dale Huffman with three “mateless” socks when Bete was named a community ambassador by the Dayton/Montgomery County Convention and Visitors Bureau Nov. 8. Bete received the award for bringing in 300 writers from more than 40 states and Canada to the spring workshop.
"In May of 1969, Erma Bombeck wrote, ‘So men are planning a trip to the moon… Big deal! Show me a washer that will launder a pair of socks and return them to you as a pair,’” he recounted.
"Well, we MADE it to the moon, BUT we still haven’t solved the national tragedy of mateless socks. So, to honor Erma, we've started Socks Without Partners, a nonprofit organization dedicated to finding mates for lonely, single socks,” he said as the Marriott Hotel banquet room erupted into laughter. “Dale Huffman is the honorary chair. If you have mateless socks, please send them to Dale.”
As one of eight community ambassadors honored at the annual breakfast, Bete received a leather flight jacket. “I get a new leather jacket. Dale gets my old socks,” he quipped.

by Teri Rizvi 11-09-06

'Losing faith' vs. 'So freakin' excited'

Instant messenger away messages are my generation's version of news headlines.
That's the conclusion I came to Tuesday night (better known as Election Day), when I was preoccupied with group meetings and projects and hadn't had a chance to study the election returns yet. In between some e-mailing, I checked a few of my friends' away messages, searching for any interesting tidbits from their days, as I often do.
Knowing the particular political tendencies of most of my friends, I got a pretty good sense of last night's poll results.
My more conservative friends displayed messages of "Ohio sucks right now" and "Losing more and more faith in voters." My more liberal friends were more positive, declaring "so freakin' excited."
I couldn't have received a more succinct report from any news station -- a Democratic sweep had obviously taken place. Who needs CNN when you have AIM?

by Caroline R. Miller ’07 11-08-06

Dear Mom and Dad ...

The McGinnis Center multipurpose room was abuzz with letter writing and envelope sealing last Wednesday as approximately 300 students participated in an annual letter-writing campaign to benefit St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.
UD participants sent approximately 4,875 letters to family members and friends asking for donations. For every 25 letters, students were entered to win a Dayton to Daytona trip; for every 50 letters, students were eligible to win a video iPod and $10 gift cards from iTunes.
It costs $1 million a day to run the hospital, and volunteers raise 80 percent of that money. In the past, UD has raised $80,000 for St. Jude through the letter-writing campaign, and last year alone UD students raised $37,000.
Siri Comparato, event marketing representative for St. Jude, said she looks forward to coming back to UD next year to raise more money. "Each year we try not to set goals other than a dollar more than last year," she said.

by Kathleen Miller '07 11-08-06

In his words

Photographer Andrew Fist ’'09: "This image was taken (in Ancona, Italy) on July 31, the day after my birthday. The night before, almost all of the students and the professors spent the evening in the town piazza, sharing stories reminiscing about the study abroad experience and carrying on with our local friends. This night, the professors decided to join the students in what became an Ancona tradition: watching the sun rise over the Adriatic Sea.
While waiting for the sun to rise, the students spent time talking with professors about the experience in Italy, college life and life in general. ...
When I look at this picture, I am reminded of the experience of the evening —-- witnessing the sun slowly show itself over a mirror-calm sea and spending the experience with the people that I grew very close to over the course my travels.
I hope that when other people look at it, they are inspired to travel the world, if not for the wonderful cultural encounters that they will have, but even for the sheer beauty of the world and the incredible places to explore."
Andrew's photograph is among the student photography featured the 2007 calendar Citizens of the World. Proceeds from the calendar support the International Scholarship Education Fund to support UD students studying, working or serving abroad and international students studying at UD. Calendars are $15, available through ArtStreet. These and other images are also on display at ArtStreet Studio D Gallery through Nov. 22.

by Matthew Dewald 11-07-06

Christmas on Campus is already hard at work

Christmas is still more than a month away, but Wednesday marked the start of the busy season for the Christmas on Campus committee. Volunteers set up tables in KU for adoption sign-ups and to sell T-shirts and ornaments to raise money for the 43rd Christmas on Campus Dec. 8.
The committee isn't equipped to take mail orders for the ornament, which was designed by a UD student. But if you're in the area, you can pick yours up around lunchtime in KU lobby. All proceeds benefit COC.

by Matthew Dewald 11-03-06

Of porches and paddocks

U D Ghetto -- the 2-year-old horse, not the place -- is set to run in the $2 million Breeders' Cup Juvenile at Churchill Downs on Saturday Nov. 4. ESPN HD coverage of all the races there begins at noon. Commentary on video from the Breeders' Cup site indicates U D Ghetto "looks great" but is "difficult to handle."

by Thomas M. Columbus 11-01-06