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The True Story of UMBC’s Mascot, True Grit

Q: What’s the real story behind True Grit? Why was a Chesapeake Bay Retriever chosen as the school’s mascot?
—Zozscha Bomhardt ’93

fa15-trugrit-web
Campus Sam was UMBC’s very first live mascot. A contest during the Fall 1966 semester resulted in the selection of the Chesapeake Bay Retriever as the university symbol.

A: In the fall of 1966, a piece in the inaugural issue of UMBC News (later dubbed The Retriever Weekly) announced a contest to choose a mascot for the new university. Entreating readers to choose a mascot “that will become the loveable pet of students for years to come,” the contest garnered dozens of entries, ranging from whimsical fancies (unicorn, angel) to prosaic suggestions (muskrat, crab).

On October 30, 1966, the university announced that student Tom Berlin had won the contest with his nomination of the Chesapeake Bay Retriever. And soon after, UMBC received its first live mascot in the form of a spirited Chesapeake Bay Retriever pup with curly brown fur. Dog breeder Claude L. Callegary – whose son Peter Callegary attended UMBC and played lacrosse for the Retrievers – donated the dog to the school in the spring of 1967. Another contest failed to yield a name for the puppy, which eventually became known as “Campus Sam.” Lacking any formal arrangements to care for the dog, Guy Chisolm, UMBC’s first director of physical plant, volunteered to take the mascot to live with his family in their Catonsville home, which was adjacent to the campus.

Richard Chisolm ’82, interdisciplinary studies, who has made a notable career as a documentary filmmaker, recalls that “Sammy” (as he and his siblings Mac and Susie called the puppy that their father brought home) grew into a large dog with a fierce bark who loved to swim in the family’s swimming pool. He and his siblings were responsible for training and walking Sammy. From time to time, coaches or faculty members from UMBC would borrow Sammy for games or campus events, where he would be adorned for the occasion with a black and gold UMBC scarf.

While Campus Sam’s life was largely peaceful, Richard Chisolm recalls that it was nearly cut short when the mascot escaped a fenced yard to chase after a deer. Richard ran after and witnessed the determined dog crash headfirst into a moving car. Sammy survived with a permanent bump on his head.

UMBC has had a number of other live Chesapeake Bay Retriever mascots – as well as mascot images to represent the university. (Two of these images, including the most recent, have been created by Jim Lord ’99 – design director of UMBC’s Creative Services.)

But perhaps the most prominent symbol of the university is a 500-pound bronze cast sculpture of the mascot, dubbed “True Grit,” which graces the plaza between the Administration Building and the Retriever Athletic Center (RAC).

Paulette Raye ‘87, poses with her creation and model.
Paulette Raye ‘87, poses with her creation and model.

UMBC commissioned artist and alumna Paulette Raye ’87, who had graduated summa cum laude from the university with a degree in philosophy, to create the sculpture. Raye created the work in a studio at Towson University, using “Nitty Gritty” – a champion Chesapeake Bay Retriever owned by Howard County residents and veterinarians James and Brenda Stewart – as her model.

In an email to UMBC Magazine, Raye recalls that “the mascot was the first dog I had ever sculpted – of any size. It was the only large size sculpture that I had ever done.”

Raye relates that a number of setbacks delayed the completion of the project. In fact, she writes, the project almost literally melted down.

“The wax casting was made and then sat in the foundry – very warm in there – for a full year before [UMBC President Michael] Hooker released the funds to complete the casting in bronze,” she recalls.

“In the meantime, the wax casting had distorted – not terribly, but it did not cast nearly as detailed and beautiful as it had been sculpted because of some warping from the heat that it had sat in for a year.”

Raye also helped UMBC Magazine solve one enduring mystery about UMBC’s mascot that an extensive search for details about the project in the university archives did not reveal: The model’s name was “Nitty Gritty,” so what was the origin of the name “True Grit?”

“‘True Grit’ was the name of Nitty Gritty’s father,” writes Raye.” Exactly why the mascot received that name, I am not sure, other than it sounded bold and strong – like the team.”

Hooker and UMBC director of athletics Rick Hartzell oversaw an unveiling of the statue – with a tug from model Nitty Gritty himself – at a ceremony on December 7, 1987. In a letter to Hoke Smith, then president of Towson University, Hooker lauded the statue’s creation at Towson’s art studios as an historic truce in the “traditional Retriever-Tiger” rivalry, and graciously invited Towson’s president to stop by and “see us, and True Grit, when you can.”

True Grit remains a steadfast and enduring campus presence – greeting new students and visitors on their arrival to campus, and bidding a fond farewell to UMBC’s proud new alumni with cap on his head and diploma in his teeth as they graduate. And that shine on his muzzle? UMBC students have developed a tradition of rubbing True Grit’s nose for luck in their exams.

— Theresa Donnelley ’13 and Richard Byrne ’86

Read more Histories & Mysteries

The real women of ‘The Favourite’ included an 18th-century Warren Buffett

Amy Froide, Professor of History, UMBC

One of the challengers at this year’s Oscars is “The Favourite,” a film set in the early 18th-century court of British monarch Queen Anne.

Focusing on the political and sexual intrigues of a female-led state, the film has, at its center, not only the queen but also her two “favorites” – Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, and Abigail, Baroness Masham. Much of the film focuses on how these two female courtiers vie for influence over Anne.

These early 18th-century women are hardly household names, so a movie that introduces them to a wider audience is welcome. And it doesn’t hurt that some of today’s biggest Hollywood stars inhabit the main roles: Olivia Coleman stars as Queen Anne, Rachel Weisz plays Sarah Churchill, and Emma Stone appears as Abigail Masham.

The film, as well as all three actresses, were nominated for Oscars.

But how does the portrayal of these women stack up against the historical reality? Might the fancy frocks, extravagant palaces and sexual triangles distract viewers from their true historical significance?

As a historian of women in early modern Britain, I’ve built my career analyzing the roles that women played in the past despite living in male-dominated societies. In fact, Sarah Churchill is featured in my recent book, “Silent Partners: Women as Public Investors during England’s Financial Revolution, 1680-1750.”

While “The Favourite” introduces viewers to the women who were important political figures in early 18th-century Britain, it doesn’t quite capture just how much power these women – especially Sarah – actually wielded.

Queen Anne and the birth of an empire

The Queen Anne portrayed in “The Favourite” is physically and mentally a mess, which isn’t entirely inaccurate.

Queen Anne wasn’t without flaws, but she left a bold stamp on history. Royal Collection
Queen Anne wasn’t without flaws, but she left a bold stamp on history.
Royal Collection

While it is true that she had bad eyesight, was overweight, suffered from gout and endured the loss of 17 children, this was only one side of her.

By watching the film, you wouldn’t learn that Queen Anne presided over the union of Scotland and England into Great Britain in 1707, kept the Jacobite supporters of her Catholic half-brother at bay, successfully maintained a Protestant monarchy that has lasted into the present day, and furthered Britain’s rise to dominance on sea and land, ushering in the first century of Britain’s global empire.

Sarah pulls the (purse) strings

The figure around whom the action pivots in “The Favourite,” however, is not Queen Anne but Sarah Churchill. The power behind Anne’s throne, Sarah possesses the political, economic and military vision for the country.

As Keeper of the Privy Purse, one of Sarah’s jobs was to manage the royal household’s financial accounts. And with her husband, General John Churchill, away much of the time leading the queen’s troops, Sarah also handled the finances and investments for her own family.

Her political adversaries accused both Churchills of benefiting financially from their ties to Queen Anne. Sarah’s control over access to the queen and John’s role leading the army created opportunities for patronage, bribes and, in John’s case, some shady involvement in army supply contracts.

In my book, I argue that while the Churchills may have been venal and dishonest, much of their money came from Sarah’s astute and underappreciated investing in the stock market. As an early adopter of stock investing, Sarah put her family’s funds into the national debt, the Bank of England and shares in private companies. In 1704, she had over 19,000 pounds of her own money in stocks, or US$3.5 million today.

Sarah became famous for avoiding the losses so many of her contemporaries incurred in the South Sea Bubble of 1720, when investors poured money into the South Sea Company. She had wisely taken her family’s money out a few months before the crash because she realized the company’s stock was overvalued. In the process she made a cool 100,000 pounds.

Unlike the male courtiers in “The Favourite” who foolishly wager on duck races, Sarah didn’t make unnecessary gambles. She was such a savvy and significant investor; like Warren Buffett today, her actions and decisions could single-handedly influence the market. When British Prime Minister Robert Walpole needed money to fund the government, it was Sarah Churchill whom he approached for a loan of 200,000 pounds.

Abigail Masham is a more shadowy historical figure. As Emma Stone so ably shows in the movie, Abigail was quite intelligent.

But she seemed to be more interested in political maneuvering for personal gain, or for the benefit of her party, the Tories, who competed with the Whigs for power. Tellingly, Abigail left politics when Anne died, while Sarah, a Whig, didn’t end her political involvement even when dismissed from Anne’s service.

A reflexive response to powerful female figures

As a queen, Anne had female, rather than, male attendants, meaning that those closest to power were also women. In “The Favourite,” Sarah Churchill tells the government ministers that if they want to see the queen, they need to an appointment with her. This inverted power dynamic made contemporaries uncomfortable and resulted in rumors and insinuations about the nature of the relationships between the queen and her female attendants.

Not surprisingly, “The Favourite” makes much of these lesbian rumors, and some scenes depict sexual activity between women. But the 18th-century suggestions of homosexuality had more to do with the discomfort contemporaries had about women wielding power than actual same-sex relationships, although those happened too.

While the movie primarily focuses on the politics of the personal – the cat fights, jealousy and love triangles – the reality is that these women ran Britain.

The movie is on firmer ground in the way it depicts the men in their orbit. They are either absent (the Duke of Marlborough is away at the front), foolish (Minister Harley struts around in make up and a foppish get-up) or subservient (the young Colonel Masham follows Abigail around like a puppy).

Yes, women like Sarah enjoyed a lot of power due to her role as the queen’s favorite, and yes, she used that power to benefit her family. No, she probably wasn’t nice.

But how was this any different from the male courtiers who had been close to English kings for centuries? Sarah Churchill wasn’t doing anything new or particularly wrong.

She was just doing it as a woman.

* * * * *

Amy Froide, Professor of History, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, is the author of Silent Partners: Women as Public Investors during Britain’s Financial Revolution, 1690-1750 (Oxford University Press, 2016).

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Header image: Sarah Churchill was an adroit investor and savvy political operative. Government Art Collection

The Conversation

Why US cities are becoming more dangerous for cyclists and pedestrians

by John Rennie Short, Professor, School of Public Policy, UMBC

As cities strive to improve the quality of life for their residents, many are working to promote walking and biking. Such policies make sense, since they can, in the long run, lead to less traffic, cleaner air and healthier people. But the results aren’t all positive, especially in the short to medium term.

In Washington D.C., for example, traffic fatalities as a whole declined in 2018 compared to the year before, but the number of pedestrian and bicyclist deaths increased by 20 percent. Pedestrian deaths also have risen in New York, and pedestrian and cycling fatalities have increased in Los Angeles in the past several years.

biking in cities

Across the nation, cyclist fatalities have increased by 25 percent since 2010 and pedestrian deaths have risen by a staggering 45 percent. More people are being killed because cities are encouraging residents to walk and bike, but their roads are still dominated by fast-moving vehicular traffic. As my research has shown, this shifting mix can be deadly.

The long decline in traffic fatalities

From a long-term perspective, traffic fatalities in the United States are declining. In the early 1970s, almost 55,000 Americans were killed in traffic accidents yearly, including people in vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists. By 2017 that figure had fallen to around 40,000, even with an increase in the number of vehicle miles driven.

The overall decline is a confirmation of Smeed’s Law, named after R.J. Smeed, a scholar at the United Kingdom’s Road Research Laboratory. Smeed found that initially, with the early introduction of motor vehicles, traffic deaths tend to rise. Around the world, almost 1.35 million people die each year in traffic accidents, but 93 percent of those fatalities occur in low- and middle- income countries where mass vehicle usage is a recent phenomenon.

As manufacturers produce safer vehicles, cities improve roads and drivers become more adept, fatalities tend to decline. But Smeed’s Law only seems to hold up for people in cars – not for other road users.

A global status report shows that road traffic injuries are now the single biggest cause of death for children and young adults, and that more than half of all traffic deaths are pedestrians, bicyclists and motorcyclists. In the United States, driver fatalities fell from 27,348 in 2006 to 23,611 in 2017, but pedestrian and cyclist fatalities increased from 5,567 to 6,760.

Lower-density cities that are heavily car-dependent, such as Phoenix, tend to be more dangerous for pedestrians.

The vehicle-centric city

Modern U.S. cities are designed largely for motor vehicles. At the turn of the 20th century, people and cars shared city streets, which served as places for children to play, adults to walk and neighbors to meet. From the 1900s to the early 1930s a battle was fought as motor vehicles became increasingly dominant. As traffic fatalities rose, angry mobs dragged reckless drivers from their cars, and some cities printed “murder maps” showing where people had been killed in traffic.

However, automotive interests won out. From the 1950s forward, city streets lost their conviviality. Roads were engineered for fast-moving and unhindered vehicular traffic, with few pedestrian crossings or bike lanes.

Even today, motorists in many cities are able to turn onto streets at intersections where pedestrians are also crossing. Most pedestrians and bicyclists are killed or injured while they are obeying the law.

A new Wild West

In the 21st century, a new city ideal has emerged of a more bike-friendly, walking-oriented city. But piecemeal implementation of bike lanes, pedestrianized zones and traffic calming measures often just adds to the confusion.

Many bike lanes and pedestrianized zones only extend for short distances. Most American drivers have yet to fully appreciate that urban streets are to be shared. And even in the best of times, cars and trucks are not good at sharing the road. Vehicle drivers are often moving too fast to identify and respond to pedestrians and bicyclists. Blind spots for drivers can be death traps for other road users.

Then there’s the asymmetry. Drivers are operating fast-moving lethal weapons, and are encased in a protective shield. And speed literally kills. A car hitting a pedestrian at 36 to 45 mph per hour is four times more likely to cause death than a vehicle traveling between 26 to 30 mph.

Adding to the dangers are distracted drivers and pedestrians and the introduction of electric scooters. Some observers also believe an epidemic of narcissism is causing more aggressive driving.

All of these factors are making walking and bicycling more dangerous. While pedestrian deaths in Norway declined by 37 percent from 2010 to 2016, in the United States they increased by 39 percent. Non-driver traffic fatalities are increasing in the United States at higher rates than most other wealthy nations.

Large trucks turning right are particularly dangerous for cyclists.

A better vision

Vision Zero, a strategy first proposed in Sweden in 1997, imagines cities with no traffic fatalities or serious injuries. At least 18 U.S. cities and states have signed on to reach that goal by 2024, including Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Washington D.C.

Strategies vary from one city to another. Boston, for example, has reduced the city speed limit from 30 miles per hour to 25 mph. Washington D.C. is improving 36 intersections that pose threats to pedestrians and enacting more bicycle-friendly policies. These cities still have far to go, but they are moving in the right direction.

There are many more options. Manufacturers can make vehicles less threatening to pedestrians and bicyclists by reducing the height of front bumpers. And cities can make streets safer with a combination of speed limit reductions, traffic calming measures, “road diets” for neighborhoods that limit traffic speed and volume, and better education for all road users.

Initiatives to create more pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly infrastructure should also be sensitive to social and class differences that may shape local priorities. And advocates contend that shifting to autonomous vehicles could make streets safer, although the verdict is still out on this claim.

The most radical shift will require not only re-engineering urban traffic, but also reimagining our cities. In my view, we need to think of them as shared spaces with slower traffic, and see neighborhood streets as places to live in and share, not just to drive through at high speed.

* * * * *

John Rennie Short, Professor, School of Public Policy, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Header image by Erik Witsoe on Unsplash

The Conversation

Just what are ‘zero tolerance’ policies – and are they still common in America’s schools?

by F. Chris Curran, Assistant Professor of Public Policy, UMBC

When parents and educators discuss school discipline, one of the things that comes up most are “zero tolerance” policies. This term is often misused and misunderstood, according to new research I published recently.

Zero tolerance policies are also thought to be widespread. But, my work and a recent report show they are actually less common than frequently thought.

Zero tolerance policies are likely to get more attention now that education secretary Betsy DeVos has repealed Obama-era guidance that sought to reduce suspensions, particularly among children of color. Some claimed that the guidance may have made things worse – and even contributed to school shootings – by discouraging schools from reporting problem behavior.

A better understanding of zero tolerance is important, then, as schools nationwide once again grapple with the proper approach to discipline. Below, I explain some basic facts about zero tolerance policies and how prevalent they are in America’s schools.

Just what is a zero tolerance policy?

Zero tolerance policies require specific and generally serious responses – such as suspension or expulsion – for certain types of student misconduct. The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights defines a zero tolerance policy as one that “results in mandatory expulsion of any student who commits one or more specified offenses.”

As early as the late 1980s, a handful of states had already adopted such laws for offenses like drugs or assaults. The 1994 passage of the federal Gun-Free Schools Act resulted in the expansion of mandatory expulsion policies for firearm offenses to all states. Wider use of zero tolerance approaches by schools for other offenses, such as tobacco and alcohol, soon followed.

In recent years, however, the term “zero tolerance” has frequently been used by advocates and the media to describe a wider range of disciplinary approaches. For example, the Advancement Project, an advocacy organization, has used the term “zero tolerance” as “shorthand for all punitive school discipline policies and practices.”

These kinds of broad definitions might rally people to join the cause of school discipline reform. However, they also muddy the water when it comes to understanding the scope of actual zero tolerance policies and efforts to reform specific practices of schools.

For example, research I have conducted with education policy expert Maida Finch of Salisbury University shows that exclusionary forms of discipline, like suspension, are an option for infractions at many schools but usually are not required. Instead, exclusionary forms of discipline are often part of a tiered system in which other interventions are tried first. A tiered system might be viewed as “zero tolerance” based on a broad definition like that used by the Advancement Project. However, it is a far stretch from being zero tolerance in actual practice.

How common are zero tolerance policies?

In a recent study, I found that, as of 2013, only seven states and 12 percent of school districts had discipline policies that used the term “zero tolerance.” While almost all states and about two-thirds of districts had a policy that required expulsion for certain infractions, these state laws and district policies overwhelmingly applied to serious infractions, like bringing a gun to school.

A recent report by the Education Commission of the States shows that only 15 states require suspension or expulsion for physical harm or assault. And only 11 do for drug use or possession. Only two states’ statutes require suspension or expulsion for less serious infractions, like defiance or disruptive behavior.

This focus on serious infractions in laws and policies contrasts with many media portrayals of zero tolerance. Based on my research, media portrayals of zero tolerance are more likely to focus on minor offenses. For example, the term “zero tolerance” has been used by the media to refer to situations where students were suspended for minor offenses, such as failing to wear a student ID badge, but only after multiple violations of the rule.

The lack of broad presence of zero tolerance policies is, in part, a result of states adopting more laws that scale back exclusionary discipline and fewer laws that call for exclusionary approaches.

Many school districts have also limited the use of suspensions. For example, Philadelphia banned the use of suspensions for minor infractions. Other districts, such as New York City and Austin, Texas, have adopted changes that make it more difficult to suspend students in the earliest grades.

Are zero tolerance policies the enemy?

During the 1990s, proponents of zero tolerance discipline saw it as a solution for school violence. They also saw it as a way to ensure unbiased discipline by removing discretion from school staff. For example, in 1995 Albert Shanker, then-president of the American Federation of Teachers, stated: “The way to make sure that this is done fairly and is not done in a prejudiced way is to say, look, we don’t care if you’re white or Hispanic or African-American or whether you’re a recent immigrant or this or that, for this infraction, this is what happens.”

To the contrary, however, studies have found that zero tolerance policies can increase suspensions and exacerbate racial disparities in discipline. They may also yield little benefit in terms of improved school climate.

Addressing zero tolerance policies is important. However, in my view, it’s important to look beyond zero tolerance. In general, almost half of suspensions occur for less serious infractions, like defiance or disruption. Students are being suspended for these infractions even when there isn’t a zero tolerance requirement in place.

Perhaps if everyone were more clear about what is and what isn’t zero tolerance, it would lead to more productive discussions about how to reform school discipline and improve outcomes for students.
* * * * *

F. Chris Curran, Assistant Professor of Public Policy, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Header photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash

The Conversation

Ivanka and her tower of crumbs

Preminda Jacob, Associate Professor of Art History and Museum Studies, UMBC

For two hours each evening, an Ivanka Trump lookalike has been vacuuming a hot pink carpet at the Flashpoint Gallery in Washington, D.C.

As she appears to be on the cusp of completing the task, spectators soil the carpet with bread crumbs. She vacuums them up. The audience tosses more crumbs onto the carpet. The pattern repeats itself.

Jennifer Rubell’s installation, titled “Ivanka Vacuuming,” has already elicited a response from the subject.

Following the Feb. 1 opening, Ivanka Trump tweeted, “Women can choose to knock each other down or build each other up. I choose the latter,” to which Rubell parried, “I would encourage you to see the piece and form your own direct response. … Not knocking anyone down. Exploring complicated subjects we all care about.”

As a historian of contemporary art, I wanted to learn more about this headline-grabbing work. So I followed Rubell’s directive and saw it myself.

The piece certainly pops: It’s pink. Very pink. And the Ivanka double has a plastic sheen that borders on surreal.

It took a moment to adjust to the saccharine visuals. But it soon became apparent that Rubell was drawing from a rich tradition of performance art. She seems to be compelling viewers to think about the huge numbers of women who perform invisible labor – all in exchange for a few crumbs from the great American pie.

Repetitive, relentless work

The work of art has been staged at the back of the gallery, in a space surrounded by three white walls. In the foreground, there’s a white cube, approximately three-and-a-half feet high and topped with a two-foot mound of Panko bread crumbs. Text invites the viewers to scatter the crumbs onto the pink carpet to keep the Ivanka doppelgänger busy.

Fortunately, the night I visited, Rubell was in the gallery observing the performance. She told me that she has witnessed the live performance in Washington, D.C., a few times. Otherwise, she’s been watching it on a live feed from her home in New York City.

The Ivanka lookalike is a model whom Rubell hired through an agency. In my brief conversation with Rubell, she mentioned that although she had to make some minor adjustments to the model’s hair color and makeup, it was relative easy to mimic Ivanka’s look because she is already so doll-like.

Rubell cited pioneering performance artist Vito Acconci as an inspiration for her interest in the medium. You can see his stamp on “Ivanka Vacuuming” in works like “Step Piece.” Over a performance period of one month in 1970, Acconci documented himself, each day, stepping on and off a stool in his apartment at the rate of 30 steps per minute until he was unable to continue. He wanted to highlight the absurdity of certain repetitive tasks.

Invisible female labor

In her work, Rubell is also tackling the seeming endlessness of mind-numbing labor. But she’s doing it in a way that aligns herself with artists such as Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro, who co-founded the California Institute of Arts’ Feminist Art program.

In 1972, Chicago and Schapiro collaborated with other feminists to create installations, performances and discussion groups concerned with the invisible labor performed by women, especially in the home.

Titled “Womanhouse,” this influential exhibition criticized prevailing attitudes towards femininity and domesticity that had been instilled through a range of cultural messages, from advertisements for home appliances, to toys like the Barbie doll.

Describing their motivation for the exhibition, Chicago and Schapiro wrote, ‘Womanhouse became the repository of the daydreams women have as they wash, bake, cook, sew, clean and iron their lives away. The Getty Research Institute, 2000.M.43.1.

The exhibition was set up in a dilapidated Los Angeles mansion. A group of 23 artists refurbished the residence prior to installing their work to make the familiar spaces of the home seem strange. For instance, the walls of the kitchen were pockmarked with fried egg sculptures that resembled eyes or breasts, while the shelves of a linen closet were merged into the body of a life-size mannequin doll.

In “Ivanka Vacuuming,” I also see echoes of New York-based artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles. In 1973, Ukeles got down on her hands and knees to scrub the floors and steps of the Wadsworth Atheneum museum. In another famous work, Ukeles shook the hand of every New York City sanitation worker.

Like “Ivanka Vacuuming” and “Womanhouse,” Ukeles wanted to bring attention to the drudgery of everyday tasks that are crucial to our well-being but go largely unrecognized and unrewarded.

The viewer as enabler

There’s a twist to “Ivanka Vacuuming,” however: It requires audience participation. In order to complete the work, viewers must grab from the pile of crumbs sitting on an abstract cube in the darkened half of the gallery and toss them into the brightly lit performance space.

Rubell’s invitation to viewers made me think of Yoko Ono’s famous “Cut Piece” from 1964. In it, Ono sat on the floor with her legs folded beneath her body and a pair of scissors by her side. Viewers were invited to approach the artist, one by one, and cut off a piece of her dress. The performance continued until the artist was almost naked.

Yoko Ono’s 1964 piece of performance art, ‘Cut Piece.’

I was also reminded of the 1990 work “Untitled (USA Today),” in which artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres piled a large mound of candy wrapped in red, blue and silver foil against the corner of a gallery and invited visitors to help themselves. Torres was prompting the viewer to think critically about the sugary news dished out by mainstream newspapers like USA Today and the way many readers uncritically gobble it up.

Rubell’s work likewise, challenges her audience to engage and to think critically.

Vacuuming isn’t inherently degrading or abject. But it’s difficult to imagine Ivanka, at any point in her privileged upbringing, wielding a vacuum.

The artwork is jolting in the way that it juxtaposes Ivanka’s public image – pristine, professional, camera-ready – with tasks performed by the maids and housekeepers who labor in Trump’s homes, hotels and resorts.

But Rubell slyly subverts the dynamics of control. Who’s in charge? Is it the wealthiest one percent whose needs power the vacuums, start up the hotel laundries every night and turn on the kitchen fryers at 4 a.m.?

Or, perhaps it’s us – the public, the spectator – who keep the crumbs coming, participating in a system that privileges the few at the expense of the many.

* * * * *

Preminda Jacob, Associate Professor of Art History and Museum Studies, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Header image of Preminda Jacob by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC Magazine.

Florence Knoll Bassett’s mid-century design diplomacy

by Margaret Re, Associate Professor of Graphic Design, UMBC
The look, feel and functionality of the modern American office can be traced back to the work of one woman.
Florence Knoll Bassett, whom Architectural Record called the “single most powerful figure in modern design,” died at 101 on Jan. 25.
In the early 20th century, offices consisted of rows of dark, heavy desks and chairs, with the executive desk angled toward an office door.
Knoll, who believed that a building’s interior was as important as its exterior, introduced an office aesthetic based on function. She interviewed people about how they did their job so they could do it efficiently and comfortably. She then went on to design products like the Model 1500 series – a desk that allowed drawers and cabinets to be added to the frame based on need.
The press coined a term for her “humanist interpretation of European modernism”: the “Knoll Look.” Her clients included CBS, Connecticut General, Alcoa and the University of Michigan, and you’ll see her influence in mid-century period pieces like “Mad Men.”
The U.S. State Department had also noticed Knoll’s growing reputation. As part of a Cold War propaganda effort to align consumer choice with political choice, they used her and her “look” to help establish and promote an American identity abroad.

Reimagining the textile

Knoll attended the Cranbrook Academy of Art, a school that’s considered the birthplace of American modernism, where she was a classmate of future star designers Charles and Ray Eames, Eero Saarinen, Harry Bertoia and Benjamin Baldwin.
She eventually moved to New York, where she joined the architectural firm of Harrison & Abromovitz in 1941. While living and working in New York, she met Hans Knoll, the owner of a small furniture company, and she joined his firm in 1943. The couple married in 1946; that same year, the H. G. Knoll Company was renamed “Knoll Associates,” and the Knoll Planning Unit, which focused on interior design, was set up. Florence was named head.
“I am not a decorator,” she famously declared in a 1964 New York Times article that credited her for revolutionizing office design as an architect in a predominantly male profession.
Frustrated by the challenge of finding fabrics suitable for use on modern furniture, Knoll initially used men’s suiting fabrics for upholstery and interiors.
Then, in 1947, Knoll Textiles, which worked closely with the Planning Unit, was launched, giving Knoll the opportunity to develop, market and sell printed and woven textiles.

Margaret Re standing in her colorful textile installation.
Curator Margaret Re with her 2018 exhibit A Designed Life: Contemporary American Textiles, Wallpapers, and Containers & Packaging, 1951 – 1954, at UMBC’s Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture (CADVC). Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC Magazine.

READ MORE: A Designed Life: Modernism as Propaganda
“Textiles were among the most visible and industrially innovative products produced in the U.S. in the 1950s and impacted many aspects of postwar life,” Berry College historian Virginia Troy told me in an interview.
Wartime rationing, which included clothing and textiles, had ended in 1946. As the economy grew, so did the appetite for textiles. Used for upholstery, curtains and carpeting, they were integral to modern architecture: They could unify open floor plans, serve as dividers and separate work areas from living spaces.
Knoll’s unobtrusive textile designs – which tended to feature subtle colors – often included geometric or biomorphic prints and woven fabrics in which vertical and horizontal weaves formed a pattern.
Her textiles were quite different from the brocade and chintz cabbage roses sold in most of the era’s textile showrooms.

Branding and selling America abroad

Around this time, the U.S. government started sponsoring international expositions to introduce the American people and their innovations abroad – what historian Robert Haddow called “Pavilions of Plenty.”
The most famous is probably the 1959 American National Exhibition in Moscow, during which then-Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev held their “kitchen debate” and argued about the merits of capitalism and communism.
But there were smaller exhibits that preceded the American National Exhibition in Moscow including “How America Lives,” which was held in Frankfurt in 1949, and “America at Home,” an exhibition in Berlin that took place in 1950.
In 1951, the Traveling Exhibition Service – now called the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service – asked Knoll to curate and design an exhibit. She had been recommended by Edgar Kaufmann Jr., the director of the Museum of Modern Art’s Good Design program. It also didn’t hurt that Knoll was known in some government circles. She had designed Secretary of War Henry Stimson’s office, and Knoll Associates had outfitted government buildings in the U.S. and Europe.
Titled “Contemporary American Textiles,” Knoll and the Planning Unit designed an exhibit that, like her office designs, was meant to be experienced as a whole. The self-lit aluminum-framed pavilion included its own drop-in floor, and double-sided wall panels assembled from textiles were hung by straps and braced by cross-wires.
For a 2018 exhibit titled “A Designed Life,” organized by UMBC’s Center for Art, Design & Visual Culture, I recreated Knoll’s original exhibit using photographs and plans from the Archives of American Art.
Brightly colored panels were used to make rooms within a room. Sight lines formed by triangular shapes and patterns directed visitors through the exhibit, offering a continuously changing viewpoint described by the magazine Interiors as “kaleidoscopic.”
The display showcased over 150 well-designed, mass-produced and readily available fabrics; in the forward of the accompanying catalog, Knoll described the textiles as “designs of beautiful color in all price ranges.” Over 50 of these fabrics were sold under the Knoll Textile label.

The recreated Knoll exhibition allows visitors to participate in the original ‘kaleidoscopic’ experience. Dan Meyers, Author provided.

The goal was to sell the idea of capitalism, America and democracy in a post-war Europe that was anxious to rebuild, and it appeared in West German and Austrian schools, museums and trade fairs.
Government records note that the exhibit was included in the 1952 Berlin Cultural Festival and presented in 1953 in Munich and Essen. The U.S. Embassy in France also sponsored its display in a 1954 Parisian trade show dedicated to household management.
To date, there’s no known physical trace of this exhibit.
Was it thrown away or donated to a German school or museum in order to earn some goodwill? Was it discarded because the 1948 Smith-Mundt Act, which authorized international public diplomacy, discouraged the presentation of these exhibitions back in the United States?
I have no way of knowing.
I do know, however, that Knoll was proud of this exhibit: When German architect Walter Gropius praised it, she wrote that it was “a great honor.” And she included sketches, plans and photographs of “Contemporary American Textiles” in her papers that she donated to the Archives of American Art.
The exhibit is a reminder that one of the country’s most influential designers was also one of its great ambassadors.

Margaret Re, Associate Professor of Graphic Design, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Header Image:  For the 2018 exhibit ‘A Designed Life,’ the author rebuilt Knoll’s ‘Contemporary American Textiles.’ Dan Meyers, Author provided

Restorative practices may not be the solution, but neither are suspensions

by F. Chris Curran, assistant professor of public policy, UMBC

Proponents of restorative justice suffered a blow recently with the late 2018 release of a much anticipated RAND study of restorative practices in Pittsburgh schools. The study’s results showed restorative practices were not as effective as many hoped – or as they are sometimes portrayed by proponents and in the media .

Unlike traditional disciplinary approaches, such as suspension, which remove students from school, restorative practices focus on repairing harm done by getting victims and perpetrators together to talk.

The idea is to rebuild and restore a sense of dignity and community.

As an educational researcher who studies school discipline, I think it would be misguided to use the study as a reason to go back to the old way of doing things, as is currently under debate in some locales.

First, let’s look at what the study found.

Mixed results

On the positive side, the study found evidence that teachers in schools using restorative practices reported better classroom management and school climate. Restorative practices led to an almost 15 percent decline in days lost to suspension overall. The intervention decreased the days lost to suspension for both black students and students from lower income households. However, it had no significant impact on white students or students from more affluent households. Furthermore, impacts were particularly large in elementary schools – there, the intervention led to an over 50 percent decline in days lost to suspension.

At the same time, however, there were a number of negative outcomes. Restorative practices did not lead to lower rates of suspension in middle schools. Nor did it result in declines in suspensions for violence or arrests. Furthermore, there were negative, statistically significant impacts on standardized achievement test scores in middle schools and for black students.

And, contrary to how teachers saw restorative practices, students reported worse classroom management and relationships.

In my opinion, it’s fair to say the findings were mixed at best.

Strong design, different takes on results

While the new study is not the first to examine restorative practices, it is notable for the strength of its research design. Schools were randomly assigned to use the Institute for Restorative Practices’ SaferSanerSchools Whole-School Change program or not. Since randomized controlled trials are considered the “gold-standard” of evaluating the effectiveness of an intervention, the RAND study theoretically provides more credible estimates of the true effect of the program separate from other school policies and practices.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the mixed findings have resulted in differing interpretations of the results.

For instance, Max Eden, of the Manhattan Institute, criticized the study’s original authors and popular media for focusing on the positive findings and downplaying the negative results. Ironically, Eden played up the negative findings claiming that “restorative justice isn’t working”.

In addition to the RAND study of restorative practices, other recent studies of discipline reforms, including bans on the use of suspension for minor offenses and shortening the length of suspensions, have also resulted in mixed findings.

A return to suspensions is not the solution

So what should educators and policymakers do with these results?

Even though the RAND study presents a speed bump on the road to discipline reform, turning back to what research has shown to be ineffective and inequitable exclusionary discipline practices would also be a mistake. Numerous studies have found that being suspended from school is predictive of a host of negative outcomes. Those outcomes include decreased academic achievement, a higher likelihood of involvement with the justice system, and decreased civic engagement as adults.

Zero tolerance policies have also been shown to result in greater uses of suspensions and little benefit in terms of improved school climate.

Exclusionary practices are also disproportionately used against students of color. Federal data and other studies have repeatedly shown that black students are three to four times as likely to be suspended as white students, with a large number of these suspensions being for lower level misconduct like “disrespect.”

Such disparities can’t be explained by differences in behavior across racial groups. The disparities may be the result of differences in the use of exclusionary discipline policies across schools.

Reducing suspensions and improving equity in school discipline is still a valid policy goal. The fact that initial reforms have not produced immediate positive results is disappointing, but hardly surprising. After all, changing practice and finding effective interventions in the field of education is hard work. Instead of settling for suspensions, I believe this is the time when states and local school districts should double down on trying innovative alternative approaches to discipline.2

* * * * *

F. Chris Curran, Assistant Professor of Public Policy, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Header image of Chris Curran by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC Magazine.

The Conversation

Celebrating Public Service

More than 130 members of the Retriever community gathered in Annapolis on January 23 to celebrate the many ways UMBC alumni make an impact through careers that serve the State of Maryland, including elected officials, policy analysts, and other advocates working for the public good. In addition to networking, talking with current students, and celebrating UMBC’s recent successes, guests also took part in a “UMBC 101” active learning demonstration, a highlight of the evening.

See more images from the evening at UMBC Alumni Flickr.

Photos by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC Magazine.

Countering Russian disinformation the Baltic nations’ way

by Terry Thompson, Adjunct Instructor in Cybersecurity, UMBC

As the new Congress begins, it will soon discuss the comprehensive reports to the U.S. Senate on the disinformation campaign of half-truths, outright fabrications and misleading posts made by agents of the Russian government on social media in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.

After years of anemic responses to Russian influence efforts, official U.S. government policy now includes taking action to combat disinformation campaigns sponsored by Russia or other countries. In May 2018, the Senate Intelligence Committee endorsed the concept of treating attacks on the nation’s election infrastructure as hostile acts to which the U.S. “will respond accordingly.” In June, the Pentagon unleashed U.S. Cyber Command to respond to cyberattacks more aggressively, and the National Cyber Strategy published in September 2018 clarified that “all instruments of national power are available to prevent, respond to, and deter malicious cyber activity against the United States.”

There are already indications that Cyber Command conducted operations against Russian disinformation on social media, including warning specific Russians not to interfere with the 2018 elections. However, low-level cyberwarfare is not necessarily the best way. European countries, especially the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, have confronted Russian disinformation campaigns for decades. Their experience may offer useful lessons as the U.S. joins the battle.

The Baltic Sea region of northern Europe. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are in light green in the center, west of Russia in blue.
Stefan Ertmann/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

The Baltic experience

Beginning in 1940 and continuing until they declared independence in the early 1990s, the Baltic countries were subjected to systematic Russian gaslighting designed to make people doubt their national history, culture and economic development.

The Soviets rewrote history books to falsely emphasize Russian protection of the Baltic people from invading hordes in the Middle Ages, and to convey the impression that the cultural evolution of the three countries was enabled by their allegiance and close ties to Russia. Even their national anthems were rewritten to pay homage to Soviet influence.

Soviet leaders devalued Baltic currencies and manipulated economic data to falsely suggest that Soviet occupation was boosting the Baltic economies. Further, Soviet authorities settled ethnic Russians in the Baltic countries, and made Russian the primary language used in schools.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union and the independence of the Baltic countries, the Russian Federation has continued to deliver disinformation to the region, making extensive use of Russian-language social media. Some themes characterize the Baltic people as ungrateful for Soviet investment and aid after World War II. Another common message criticizes Baltic historians for “falsification of history” when really they are describing the real nature of the Soviet occupation.

A massive Russian attack

After independence, and as the internet grew, Estonia led the way in applying technology to accelerate economic development. The country created systems for a wide range of government and commercial services, including voting, banking and filing tax returns electronically. Today, Estonia’s innovative e-residency system is being adopted in many other countries.

These advances made the Baltics a prime target for cyberattacks. In the spring of 2007, the Russians struck. When Estonia moved a monument memorializing Soviet soldiers from downtown Tallinn, the country’s capital, to a military cemetery a couple of miles away, it provoked the ire of ethnic Russians living in Estonia as well as the Russian government.

A statue
The relocation of the Bronze Soldier of Tallinn sparked a Russian cyberattack on Estonia in 2007.
Keith Ruffles/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

For three weeks, Estonian government, financial and media computer systems were bombarded with enormous amounts of internet traffic in a “distributed denial of service” attack. In these situations, an attacker sends overwhelming amounts of data to the targeted internet servers, clogging them up with traffic and either slowing them down or knocking them offline entirely. Despite concerns about the first “cyber war,” however, these attacks resulted in little damage. Although Estonia was cut off from the global internet temporarily, the country’s economy suffered no lasting harm.

These attacks could have severely damaged the country’s financial system or power grid. But Estonia was prepared. The country’s history with Russian disinformation had led Estonia to expect Russian attacks on computer and information systems. In anticipation, the government spearheaded partnerships with banks, internet service providers and other organizations to coordinate responses to cyberattacks. In 2006, Estonia was one of the first countries to create a Computer Emergency Response Team to manage security incidents.

The Baltic response

After the 2007 attack, the Baltic countries upped their game even more. For example, Estonia created the Cyber Defense League, an army of volunteer specialists in information technology. These experts focus on sharing threat information, preparing society for responding to cyber incidents and participating in international cyber defense activities.

Internationally, Estonia gained approval in 2008 to establish NATO’s Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence in Tallinn. Its comprehensive research into global cyber activities helps identify best practices in cyber defense and training for NATO members.

In 2014, Riga, the capital of neighboring Latvia, became home to another NATO organization combating Russian influence, the Strategic Communications Center of Excellence. It publishes reports on Russian disinformation activities, such as the May 2018 study of the “Virtual Russian World in the Baltics.” That report analyzes Russian social media activities targeting Baltic nations with a “toxic mix of disinformation and propaganda.” It also provides insight into identifying and detecting Russian disinformation campaigns.

“Baltic elves” – volunteers who monitor the internet for Russian disinformation – became active in 2015 after the Maidan Square events in the Ukraine. And the Baltic nations have fined or suspended media channels that display bias.

The Baltic countries also rely on a European Union agency formed in 2015 to combat Russian disinformation campaigns directed against the EU. The agency identifies disinformation efforts and publicizes accurate information that the Russians are seeking to undermine. A new effort will issue rapid alerts to the public when potential disinformation is directed against the 2019 European Parliament elections.

Will the ‘Baltic model’ work in the US?

Because of their political acknowledgment of threats and actions taken by their governments to fight disinformation, a 2018 study rated Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania the three European Union members best at responding to Russian disinformation.

A look inside Russia’s propaganda machine.

Some former U.S. officials have suggested adopting similar practices, including publicizing disinformation efforts and evidence tying them to Russia. The Senate Intelligence Committee has called for that too, as has the Atlantic Council, an independent think tank that focuses on international affairs.

The U.S. could also mobilize volunteers to boost citizens’ and businesses’ cyberdefenses and teach people to identify and combat disinformation.

Disinformation is a key part of Russia’s overall effort to undermine Western governments. As a result, the battle is ever-changing, with Russians constantly trying new angles of attack and target countries like the Baltic nations identifying and thwarting those efforts. The most effective responses will involve coordination between governments, commercial technology companies and the news industry and social media platforms to identify and address disinformation.

A similar approach may work in the U.S., though it would require far more collaboration than has existed so far. But backed by the new government motivation to strike back when provoked, the methods used in the Baltic states and across Europe could provide a powerful new deterrent against Russian influence in the West.The Conversation

* * * * *

Terry Thompson, Adjunct Instructor in Cybersecurity, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Header image by 贝莉儿 NG on Unsplash.

Peaceworkers Reunite to Celebrate Milestone of Public Service

Twenty-five years ago, when Sarge and Eunice Shriver inaugurated the new Shriver Center at UMBC, they charged the community to connect scholarship, service, and reflection to engage and collaborate with communities in Baltimore City. At the time, Ernest Boyer, a leading visionary in higher education, called the newly inaugurated center a prototype for a  “New American College,” where the university’s people and resources would be focused on a public service mission within its urban setting…to take up the citizen call to connect learning and higher education with social change and development.

The Shriver Center meets that challenge in a number of ways, including the Shriver Peaceworker Program, which since 1993 has “realized the potential impact of Peace Corps Volunteers returning home ready to apply the lessons and experience they had gained abroad.” Through this work, the program has supported nearly 190 Fellows representing over 60 countries of Peace Corps service (from Albania to Zimbabwe and dozens in between), as well as served with scores of local community partners. Their commitment in East Baltimore alone has supported a myriad of programs and organizations such as inclusive programming in Patterson Park; bringing Spanish bilingual services and outreach to numerous organizations in the area’s diverse surrounding communities; coordinating environmental education programming; organizing communities and local projects, and serving youth in local schools to provide college access and increase family engagement.  

This fall more than a hundred Shriver Peaceworker alumni living locally and around the world reunited in Baltimore to celebrate their first reunion with a weekend filled with festivities, reflection, and service, including trash clean-up at Gwynns Falls/Leakin Park.

The next 25 years of Peaceworkers

The weekend closed with alumni reflecting on the challenges of continuing to engage in authentic dialogue across diverse perspectives and lines of division. It’s the community created by this shared and ongoing commitment to service and peace that makes the program’s bonds so strong and enduring.  

We’re proud and inspired by the lives of service and social change our alumni are leading.  Nearly half have stayed on in our Baltimore region and the other half are engaged around the country and across the globe. And all are committed to living their values and making a positive difference in their communities and beyond. Peaceworker alums are teachers, program leaders, policy analysts and advocates, social workers, community organizers, public servants at all levels of government, higher education staff and faculty, and more.     

We had a wonderful reunion celebration…Now we are looking forward to keeping that energy moving forward into the next 25 years!  In one of Sarge’s (Sargent Shriver’s) late public speeches in 2004, he continued to challenge us all to hold on to social hope and keep at the work of peacebuilding and positive social change, saying:  “All of history’s great changes — nonviolent changes — came from below, not from above. It comes from us, and often from the least of us. From my own life I can tell you. It’s not what you get out of life. It’s what you give to others in life which truly enriches your own life.”

– Joby Taylor, Ph.D. ’05, language, literacy & culture
Director, Shriver Peaceworker Program

 

Who is responsible for migrants?

by Felipe A. Filomeno, Assistant Professor of Political Science and Global Studies, UMBC

President Donald Trump tends to portray migrants as a foreign problem that has suddenly – and unfairly – been “dumped” at America’s doorstep.

Migration “is a way they get certain people out of their country and dump in U.S.,” he wrote on Nov. 25 about a caravan of mostly Honduran women, children and young men seeking asylum in the United States.

He is not alone. The flow of refugees and asylum-seekers from poor countries to the United States border is often attributed, incorrectly, to domestic unrest in a far-off nation. Some Americans blame far-off governments for not being “willing to take care of their own country’s problems,” as one New York Times reader commenting on the migrant caravan put it recently.

This one-sided view of migration ignores the global forces that bind our world together, my research on immigration policy shows.

The extreme violence, environmental disasters and grinding poverty that drive people from places like Guatemala, Honduras and Afghanistan are largely the result of global phenomena like colonialism, climate change and trade.

Seen through an international lens, both migrant-sending and migrant-receiving countries share responsibility for the people displaced by globalization.

Colonialism and its consequences

It’s no coincidence that immigration routes today follow the same path European colonizers did – but in reverse.

France invaded Algeria in 1830 and kept it as a colony until 1962. Today, the largest immigrant group in France is Algerians.

And while Britain today may wish to close its borders, in 1948 it invited citizens of former British colonies into the country to help the United Kingdom rebuild after World War II. Indians and Pakistanis are now the second- and third-largest immigrant groups in the United Kingdom, after Polish people.

The Central Americans looking to the United States for refuge are following a similar historical pattern.

Technically, the United States was never an empire. But its government consistently intervened in Latin American domestic affairs during the late 20th century, installing and even removing leaders across the region.

In the 1980s, hoping to beat back Communism, the U.S. funded and armed authoritarian regimes in Central America as they battled leftist guerrillas. These decadeslong civil wars killed thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands.

War also killed the region’s economy. Average income in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua was actually lower in 1990 than it had been in 1980.

Regional instability caused mass migration to the United States. Between 1981 and 1990 almost 1 million Salvadorans and Guatemalans entered the United States clandestinely.

Trade, poverty and cheap immigrant labor

Economic links between richer and poorer countries have also spurred mass migration.

More international trade in recent decades has brought jobs and improved living standards in some countries – among them Chile, China and South Korea – preventing migration by creating the economic conditions that allow people to stay put.

Strategic agricultural aid to developing countries, too, has reduced emigration from some rural countries, according to a recent study in the journal World Development, which analyzed data from 103 countries that received aid from 1995 to 2010.

But international commerce has also unleashed migration elsewhere.

Mexican immigration to the U.S. surged after the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect in 1994. The deal increased Mexico’s manufacturing sector substantially – but it hurt farmers by opening Mexican markets to subsidized U.S. agricultural products.

Unable to compete with these cheap imports, hundreds of thousands of Mexican farmers lost their jobs. By 2006, an estimated 2 million peasants had been pushed out of rural areas in Mexico. Many of these displaced farmers migrated to the U.S., where they found jobs in the construction, agricultural and restaurant sectors.

Today, Hispanics make up around a quarter of workers in those industries. The same low-wage immigrant labor helps to keep manufacturing afloat in the U.S. despite the otherwise high costs of doing business.

Trump insists only that cheap imports from developing countries threatens U.S. industry. The realities of migration are more complex and nuanced than that.

Climate refugees

Climate change is another global problem contributing to the migration crisis.

Global warming-related problems like rising sea levels and extreme weather have their origins in the Industrial Revolution in Europe 150 years ago. But their impacts are hitting poor countries first and hardest.

Residents of small Pacific islands such as Kiribati and Tuvalu must abandon their homes because coastal erosion is pushing people inland, creating conflicts over the scarce remaining dry land.

Tuvalu is among the low-lying island nations facing imminent risk of extinction.
Tomoaki INABA, CC BY-SA

Even Central American migration is linked in part to climate change. Changes in temperature and rainfall across the region have damaged the coffee and maize crops over the past decade. Some farmers who’ve lost their rural livelihood joined the caravan earlier this year.

And though China has surpassed the United States as the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, people in rich countries still use a disproportionate share of global resources.

Per capita carbon emissions in high-income countries is about 30 times higher than in low-income countries because people in the richer countries have bigger and more air-conditioned homes, eat more meat and drive and fly more.

Such statistics raise serious doubt about who, exactly, should take responsibility for modern climate refugees.

Stopping migration before it starts

Rich countries are not to blame for every problem that drives migration from poor countries.

Corrupt, predatory and violent leaders in Central America, Syria, Pakistan and many other places are also accountable for creating hazardous conditions in their countries.

And Haiti’s devastating 2010 earthquake, which destroyed the nation’s capital and sent thousands fleeing for their lives, had nothing to do with climate change.

Still, too much political rhetoric out of Washington offers a simplistic, one-sided view of migration. A more balanced debate might help policymakers take measures that might actually address the problem, rather than just casting blame on poor countries and closing borders.

Other countries increasingly agree. On Dec. 10, 164 nations signed the Global Compact for Migration, the world’s first-ever comprehensive international agreement. It assigns shared responsibility for hosting migrants in ensuring their human rights are respected and addressing the root causes of displacement.

The United States was not one of them.

* * * * *

Felipe A. Filomeno, Assistant Professor of Political Science and Global Studies, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Header photo by Andrew Stutesman on Unsplash

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.The Conversation

Moments of Truth

We’ve all had these moments.

Moments of wondering aloud. Moments of principled argument over sandwiches in The Commons. Moments of listening and believing as someone’s personal truth unfolds before you. Moments of examining our ideals and acting upon them.

Humanity strives for truth, but it’s not such an easy thing to achieve. Barriers can keep us from it. (Sometimes we are our own worst barriers, in fact.) But we persist in breaking through, in not shying away. And we nurture each other as we figure things out.

In his State of the University address this fall, UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski noted, “We are a community that believes in the importance of having respect for each other and seeking the truth. Nothing we do at UMBC is more important than the search for truth, and our role in teaching students how to think critically.”

You can’t have truth without light. This is a community where that light burns brightly.

These are but a few of our community’s ways of approaching tough questions. These are our

MOMENTS OF TRUTH.

Moment #1: Questioning Everything — Math + Philosophy = Doubt
Moment #2: Committing to Print — Beyond Black & White
Moment #3: Examining Our Biases — Seeking Honesty in Collections
Moment #4: Seeking the Truth — Science and Faith
Moment #5: Creating Safe Spaces — Seen and Believed
Moments #6-11: Walking the Talk — Words Become Actions
Moment #12: Listening to Our Instincts — The Computer is (Not) Always Right
Moment #13: All Voices Welcome — Conversations We Avoid Over Thanksgiving Dinner
Moment #14:  Being Ourselves, for Ourselves and Strangers — Our (Secret) Truths

Moment #1.
Questioning Everything
MATH + PHILOSOPHY = DOUBT

For those who think college is just about sitting in a lecture hall, listening to a professor profess, absorbing what they hear, and leaving with a brain full of absolutes, we humbly turn your attention to the far corner of the room.

As a mathematician, professor, and novelist Manil Suri wants his students to question everything they hear; as a philosopher, instructor Jim Thomas desires the same. So, when they talk with their classes about representations of truth in their fields — proofs, axioms, facts, and the like — they sometimes bend it a bit just for the sake of argument.

Suri likes to start his 301 class with a proof that seems right…until it suddenly doesn’t. The students realize they’re trying earnestly to prove that any whole number, like 1, 2, 3, etc., equals any other possible whole number.

“And I say, ‘Do you know what this is saying? Do you think there might be something wrong with it?’ And so then they scramble to try and find what could be wrong,” he says.

Thomas approaches his intro students in similar fashion, telling them a series of truths about himself when he first meets them, then building into statements that could or could not be believable, and then laying it on a bit thicker. He’ll say he’s in his 70s, for instance (which he most certainly is not), but with a truly double take-inducing deadpan.

It’s all part of how they teach their students to think deeply about two subjects known for building off of deceptively simple ideas. One plus one equals two, but it can take hundreds of pages to prove that equation. Philosophy hopes to create a truthful description of the world, but anyone studying it long enough eventually realizes how naive the pursuit is, Thomas says: there’s so much standing in the way of answers.

“I say, ‘Of course, it’s a word. I wrote it on the board, so that’s a word.’
And so now they’re thinking, ‘Why am I trusting this?’”
— Jim Thomas, philosophy instructor

The best way of moving forward is to doubt everything, the two agree, discussing it upon meeting for the first time.

“Any kind of proposition that’s given to you, the only way you can actually get to a proof — even when it’s true — is to try and think how it might be false and to hurl all these possibilities at it, and try to see if there’s a chink somewhere that things don’t work out,” says Suri. “And that’s a super-concentrated version of the same kind of skepticism we increasingly need in day-to-day life.”

And so Thomas’s way of purposely misspelling words on the whiteboard to see if anyone calls him out on it isn’t just some kooky professor trick, but a way of kickstarting that doubt in his students.

“I say, ‘Of course, it’s a word. I wrote it on the board, so that’s a word.’ And so now they’re thinking, ‘Why am I trusting this?’” says Thomas. “I want them to doubt whether or not they know the truth, and I want them to doubt it so they understand that the truth is something that is worth the trouble.”

— Jenny O’Grady

Jump to Moment #1  #2  #3  #4  #5  #6-11  #12  #13  #14   Back to Top

Moment #2.
Committing to Print
BEYOND BLACK & WHITE

The Retriever, UMBC’s student newspaper since 1966, has always had something to say. Above the fold, the very first paper of this fall semester declared its intentions in bold inch-high type:

We Commit.
To Truth. To Community. To You.

“We decided we needed to make a statement and re-commit to what we stand for as an organization,” said current editor-in-chief Julia Arbutus ’20, a double major in English and financial economics.

People noticed. And as the semester has progressed, with all of the twists and turns of news on campus, the student reporters have stretched themselves to learn and grow — a process repeated many times over since the paper first published in its original form as UMBC News in September 1966.

Joseph Howley ’06, ancient studies, served as a reporter and editor during a period of time that included upsets in fraternity leadership, a murder case involving a former student, and the beginnings of the war in Iraq. During that time, he and his staff strove to create a publication that helped students understand what was going on in the world around them, he said.

“An independent student press may be the only organization on campus equipped and motivated to challenge those institutions and make sure that students know what they need to about how they are or are not looking out for them,” said Howley, now an associate professor of classics at Columbia University.

“I hoped for this type of impact, but I didn’t know how
widespread it would be.” — Julia Arbutus ’20

Former news editor Tyler Lewis ’18, political science, learned skills during his years at The Retriever that are serving him now as an intern on Capitol Hill.

“Working as a student journalist provided the perfect opportunity to sit down with important members of the community,” he said. “The more I networked, the more scoops I received, and consequently I was able to better fulfill my goal of writing meaningful stories that mattered to my audience.”

As a scholar and a budding journalist, Arbutus takes the job of telling the truth very seriously. When that first issue hit the stands, she got an immediate rush of support from students, as well as alums of the paper, she said.

“I hoped for this type of impact, but I didn’t know how widespread it would be,” she said. “[This is] a movement to channel our journalism into more student-focused stories and to find a more active place within the student body on campus. We really want students to be proud of and engage with their community newspaper.”

— Jenny O’Grady

Jump to Moment #1  #2  #3  #4  #5  #6-11  #12  #13  #14   Back to Top

Moment #3.
Examining Our Biases
SEEKING HONESTY IN COLLECTIONS

The tagline for the television show The X-Files proclaimed that “the truth is out there.” Once a week, true-believer Fox Mulder and sceptic Dana Scully probed the possibility of hidden realms of the paranormal and conspiratorial lurking beneath the surface of American society. Faced with current cultural debates, the tagline seems less a tongue-in-cheek credo than a desperate plea to restore a once verifiable truth that is now elusive; the truth is out there, somewhere, surely, but where? While it is easier than ever to access information, it seems harder to decipher the significant fact from the extraneous detail.

“We must also interrogate how these objects came together in a collection
in the first place, since what is excluded can tell us just as
much as what is included.” — Beth Saunders

I come from the world of museums, where provenance is a major key to unlocking information about an object. Knowing where something came from and who else may have viewed, valued, or owned it tells us a great deal about objects, but also about history. I would argue that we could all benefit from thinking more about the provenance of the information we encounter. Museum and library collections make it possible to trace information to its origin by providing access to primary sources. Evaluating subsequent interpretations against the original text illuminates the biases that each researcher necessarily brings to the material. However, we must also interrogate how these objects came together in a collection in the first place, since what is excluded can tell us just as much as what is included. The truth is indeed out there, if you are willing to look for it.

— Beth Saunders, curator and head of Special Collections and Gallery

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Moment #4.
Seeking the Truth
SCIENCE AND FAITH

“Science is a systematic process that seeks to understand the inner workings of the universe, our world, and ourselves,” says Bill LaCourse, dean of the College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences at UMBC. In other words, it is a process that seeks the truth — not a static body of facts. Scientists rely on observations and experiments to reveal and then repeatedly confirm truths about the world, but no conclusions they draw are ever guaranteed to be the last word.

It’s that uncertainty, the apparent fleeting nature of what is true, that may lead some people to toss science aside as unreliable or even misleading. That’s why it’s so important that the practice of science be communicated in a way that helps people understand its strengths alongside its limitations.

One of those limitations is that science is a human endeavor. As such, it is not as pure or objective as we might like to believe. “Science is a search for truth that relies on observations by humans and all their inherent qualities, whether righteous or flawed,” says LaCourse. Steve Freeland, an astrobiologist and director of the Individualized Study Program (formerly known as Interdisciplinary Studies) at UMBC, adds, “Scientists are partly responsible for creating what they observe in ways we still do not fully understand.” In other words, who does the science, despite their best intentions to be objective, influences what truths are discovered.

But the scientific method is not the only way to seek the truth. “Twentieth century scholarship, from within and beyond science, has led us to a current understanding that no one approach to finding truth is superior or sufficient,” says Freeland, who is also a committed Christian. “Logical systems must always be incomplete in terms of what they describe,” he adds. “This gives each of us reasons for humility as we seek truth in our different ways.” The scientific method, religious traditions, spiritual practices, and Indigenous traditional knowledge are all valid ways of seeking truth.

However, it is easy to distrust knowledge gained by means one does not understand. In particular, the uncertainties and impurities inherent to the scientific enterprise can influence how it is perceived by people more familiar with other truth-seeking methods, especially if they are more absolute in their profession of what the truth is. And yet, it is critical that scientists and people of faith communicate across their differences if we are to build a just, safe, and healthy world for all.

“In the end, the search for truth will be a collective journey of many by many roads,
humbled by our own ignorance and glorified by a common goal.”
— CNMS Dean Bill LaCourse

In March, UMBC will offer our community the chance to explore the tricky terrain that is communication among science and faith communities. UMBC is one of six universities nationwide selected by the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Dialog on Science, Ethics, and Religion to organize two days of events around this topic. LaCourse, Freeland, and STEM communications manager Sarah Hansen lead the UMBC team organizing the workshop.

Researchers will receive training on how to communicate with people of faith in ways that constructively engage them while also respecting their identities and worldviews. That includes finding ways to show people of all backgrounds how recognizing the value of science — but not necessarily its primacy — aligns with their values, such as being stewards of the Earth or protecting the vulnerable. The event will also allow scientists an opportunity to familiarize themselves with other means of truth-seeking, and learn how to avoid alienating people by invalidating those methods in conversation.

“In the end, the search for truth will be a collective journey of many by many roads, humbled by our own ignorance and glorified by a common goal,” says LaCourse. As Karl Popper, renowned secular philosopher, put it, “Our attempts to see and to find the truth are not final, but open to improvement… criticism and discussion are our only means of getting nearer to the truth.”

— Sarah Hansen M.S. ’15

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Moment #5.
Creating Safe Spaces
SEEN AND BELIEVED

“Is it my fault?”
“What just happened?”
“Is it rape?”
“Am I just making a big deal out of this?”

These are the questions we hear on a daily basis in the Women’s Center. UMBC community members — whether current students, alumni, faculty, or staff — tell us their truths, despite their own misgivings about the efficacy of that truth.

This self-doubt is common among survivors of sexual violence. And, so we tell them: We believe you. We see you. You matter.

In the wake of trauma and abuses of power, many question the veracity of their experiences and the impact that it has had on them. Whether a person has faced emotional, physical, psychological, social, or economic abuse, we see the impact clearly in the fear and misplaced self-doubt that surround them like dark clouds. Sometimes, coming to the Women’s Center is the first time a student feels believed or validated. Even as we work through resources meant to help and guide people towards healing, these misgivings continue interrupting every aspect of recovery.

And this work is complex.

Our community is not just made up of survivors puzzling through their experiences for the first time. Healing is not, as much as we may want it to be, linear. And, so we also support survivors as they face instances of re-traumatization, as they navigate the frustrating and often disappointing process of seeking justice, and as they practice coping skills in a culture that often does not lend itself to healing.

“There is power in naming our experiences and truths as a shared collective and
this is what we have been called to do in this moment on our campus.”
— Jess Myers and Amelia Meman ’15

Our job in the Women’s Center is to create space for truth-telling. This has been our role since our founding in 1991 as a small, volunteer-led operation. We were born in the wake of Anita Hill’s testimony where she spoke her truth about sexual harassment, and which then allowed so many other women to come forward with their own experiences.

There is power in naming our experiences and truths as a shared collective and this is what we have been called to do in this moment on our campus. As UMBC wrestles with the reality of a civil lawsuit that has forced us to examine the ways we listen to and support survivors of sexual violence, we are given a renewed opportunity to bring a light to truth and help foster a campus that is survivor-centered.

For the last 27 years, our job in the Women’s Center has been to create space for truth-telling by supporting survivors of all genders through individualized support, events like Take Back the Night, educational workshops, and advising the We Believe You student organization, but our real goal is ultimately to work ourselves out of the job. What would it look like if our campus community was so dedicated to sexual violence prevention work that the Women’s Center no longer needed to operate? What are the doubts and truths within ourselves that we need to explore to get there as a campus community? These are the questions we ask ourselves every day and we hope that in this chaotic time, more of us will have the courage to join us in this culture changing work.

— Jess Myers, director, and Amelia Meman ’15, program coordinator, UMBC Women’s Center For more information about the Women’s Center and its services for the many UMBC communities it supports, visit womenscenter.umbc.edu.

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Moments #6-11.
Walking the Talk
WORDS BECOME ACTIONS

“It’s much easier to help others when you yourself are okay with asking for help. My hope is that by empowering others to ask for help, they will be more willing to give help in the future. Students seem to be very responsive to this. I’ve developed a relationship with many of my residents because I helped them out of a tight spot just once. Later on, they’ve helped me carry stuff up to my room, cleaned up after a program, and other small acts that really mean a lot to me. By cultivating a culture of high support, we can empower others to ask for help and give help. I’ve found that this principle is much less about knowing exactly what to do in every situation, and more about being willing to participate in the community of support.”

Lauren Whittaker is lead resident assistant in Erickson Hall, responsible for 50 students and 11 other R.A.s in the building. As a junior on the pre-physician’s assistant track, she is studying biological sciences with a psychology minor.

“I myself am a survivor of sexual assault and I know how traumatizing that can be to experience, and that really motivates me to make sure the school is doing everything it can to support survivors as well as enacting preventative measures. It is important to feel empowered because literally everything is malleable, even the things they say are not changeable are changeable with enough drive and support. Without people advocating during every step of the process, change ceases to happen.”

John Platter is a junior studying psychology, and a member of the LGBTQ Student Union, as well as various campus groups such as STOPP and UMBC Progressives.

“I have been working with people who have experienced assault since 2002 and have heard many stories. I have learned that there is no ‘right’ way to respond to an assault. People’s responses to an assault, and what they need to feel supported following assault, vary hugely. Some want to talk about the assault to whomever will listen. Some never tell anyone. Some seem relatively unaffected, whereas others seem shattered. And these responses often change over time. People may seem fine right after a traumatic event and then become more distressed months or years later. It’s often not possible to predict what someone who has been assaulted will need, and usually what we see as observers is just a piece of what’s happening inside someone after an assault. I have learned that the only way to know how to support survivors is to listen to them, and listen closely. Sometimes this means putting aside my anger when I hear about injustice and harm that someone has suffered so that I can stay focused on providing the support that they’re asking for — in short, allowing survivors to define their experience for themselves and ask for what they want.”

Rebecca Schacht is a clinical psychologist who serves as director of the UMBC Psychology Training Clinic. She is also an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology.

“In an environment where student-athletes are expected to be physically and mentally strong, it can be hard for them to ask for help. I feel honored when they seek me out for assistance. They trust me to help guide them through a challenging situation and I do my best to help them navigate the environment. It is important for community members who work closely with students to feel comfortable being an advocate. Even if you don’t know the right answer, you probably know someone who does. And to that student, the first phone call makes all the difference.”

Jessica Hammond-Graf advises student-athletes in her role as senior associate athletic director at UMBC.

“One of my favorite opportunities to connect with students is through Green Dot, which teaches community members that as bystanders we have a responsibility to keep each other safe. Community members learn how to identify behaviors related to stalking, partner violence, and sexual assault and then act by being direct, distracting, or delegating to someone more equipped to help. Nobody has to do everything, but everyone has to do something! I think people get overwhelmed by the idea of intervening as if it has to be a superhero gesture — where you put on a cape and take down the ‘bad guys.’ Intervening can be a simple moment in time where you ask someone if they’d like to talk or share some behavior that you have observed. Most of us can think about a moment, big or small, where we could have really benefited from someone stepping in to help us. How great it would feel to have confidence that the people around you, both friends and strangers, have an interest in keeping everyone safe. I believe that when thoughtful citizens learn the skills to do this, we can change UMBC and the world.”

Jacki Stone runs UMBC’s Green Dot training program, and serves as a community health and safety specialist in UMBC’s Division of Student Affairs.

“My work often involves feelings of excitement, frustration, sadness, hurt, joy, and fulfillment. These feelings at times can happen at once in the one hour I’m sitting with the student trying to navigate the process of understanding their needs, finding the resources, calling, advocating and connecting them to the resources. Some days the process is easy and straightforward and I have answers right away. Other times it feels like I am jumping hoops and moving mountains. We are in the business of higher education, meaning we are in the role of getting these individuals educated, with degrees to be productive members of society. They can’t get to the finish line if we don’t help them with the many hurdles along the way….and model behaviors that show empowerment and value social justice.”

Doha Chibani is a clinical social worker in UMBC’s Counseling Center and a 2008 alumna of UMBC’s psychology program.

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Moment #12.
Listening to Our Instincts
THE COMPUTER IS (NOT) ALWAYS RIGHT

Each day, we interact with content in a range of forms, and rely on technology for everything from communicating and navigating our travels, to staying updated on the news and paying bills. Richard Forno, assistant director of UMBC’s Center for Cybersecurity and senior lecturer of computer science and electrical engineering, says people should take any information they find online with a grain of salt until they can verify it. Just because something is on the internet, Forno explains, does not mean that it is true or accurate.

Technology, however, is not solely to blame. “It’s a function, I think, of education and society teaching people to put faith in technology before their own selves,” he says.

Forno recommends that people do their own fact checking and listen to their instincts. “A good rule of thumb is if you hear something or receive something online, that before you get your emotions all tied up in knots, is anybody else reporting on this?”

As an educator, Forno feels it is his responsibility to educate UMBC students on how to think critically. “This all ties back to the idea of thinking critically and thinking for yourself, and not just blindly relying on what you’re presented with as information,” Forno explains. It’s also important that people who post to social media accounts be aware of the content they are sharing with their followers.

“This all ties back to the idea of thinking critically and thinking for yourself,
and not just blindly relying on what you’re presented with as
information.” — Richard Forno

“Recognizing that by just blindly passing something along on Twitter, you’re contributing to the noise machine, and you’re making the problem worse,” he says. “I know in my case, there were times where I’ve seen stuff on Twitter that I’ve been caught in a moment of weakness, and went ‘Oh, retweet. Stop.’ Then look through it, and say ‘No, I’m not going to play this.’”

The notion that the “computer is always right” can be challenging for consumers of media and information to work against because some images and videos circulating online can be very convincing. That’s why taking courses in a wide range of disciplines is so helpful for students shaping their perspectives, Forno says. “Things like civics and media literacy, digital cybersecurity — there’s a need for that so that you become a well-rounded and competent citizen.”

— Megan Hanks

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Moment #13.
All Voices Welcome
CONVERSATIONS WE AVOID OVER THANKSGIVING DINNER

The old adage says there are three things one should never talk about: religion, money, and politics. However, avoiding certain topics instead of facing them head on can lead to divisiveness, and a lack of forward momentum.

As Romy Hübler, assistant director of the Center for Democracy and Civic Life, explains, “That goes against the idea of coming together and thinking about our own experiences and acknowledging the issues we’re all facing in order to truly address them.”

As a campus, the way to ensure that each community member’s truth is heard and respected is by placing the emphasis on collaboration and conversation, not individualization. Vrinda Deshpande ’20, executive vice president of the Student Government Association, recently worked with peers and several campus constituents to organize a “Dinner with Friends,” where guests talked about Maryland state and local politics at 10 simultaneous dinners, drawing conversation from their personal experiences.

While the student voice is important, students may not necessarily recognize that. “The biggest thing I hear from my fellow students is that as an undergraduate student, I’m not qualified to be part of certain conversations,” says Deshpande. “But undergraduate students make up the majority of the campus so a lot of the policy and decisions affect us directly.”

Similarly, in 2016 UMBC’s chapters of College Democrats and College Republicans began hosting “Coffee and Conversation” events — forums intended to appeal to all students, not just those who previously engaged in civil discourse, the organizers say.

“We want to help mend the social fabric and move away from the
divisive rhetoric that we see in our society today.” — Scott Buchan ’20

This year’s topic was healthcare, chosen because “we found the issue to be extremely relevant to the current election cycle and a contentious topic of the same nature as past topics (e.g., immigration, gun control),” explained College Democrats president, Luis Zuluaga-Orozco ’18, political science and media and communication studies.

Representatives from the Maryland Citizens’ Health Initiative and the Heartland Institute opened the event with remarks and then allowed the audience to steer the conversation, with lots of interaction in small groups. “We hope that the people coming out walk away with a better understanding of their peers and those who think differently than them and that they find that they can get along,” says Scott Buchan ’20, political science, College Republicans president. “So much emphasis is put on political beliefs that people are cutting off their friends who think differently. We want to help mend the social fabric and move away from the divisive rhetoric that we see in our society today.”

— Kait McCaffrey

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Moment #14.
Being Ourselves, for Ourselves and Strangers
OUR (SECRET) TRUTHS

Tucked away in a thicket of trees at the edge of campus, a seemingly ordinary notebook holds hundreds of tales of heartbreak, euphoria, angst, and love. The journal is housed beneath a bench in the Joseph Beuys Sculpture Park and serves as a blank slate for any passerby who has a story to tell.

In a world that lives almost entirely online through platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and Tumblr, the idea of taking pen to paper seems almost archaic. However, members of the UMBC community have shared their most private, oftentimes anonymous, truths in this highly public forum for nearly two decades now.

“If everybody keeps it secret, those who really need it may never find it.”
— Sandra Abbott, Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture

Once each journal is filled, it is collected and added to the tome that’s been steadily growing since the early 2000s, each serving as its own sort of time capsule. Brandee Blumenthal ’20, economics, is spending her semester working in the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture (CADVC) to scan and archive the collection of journals. She reflects on how this project manages to thrive in a digital world explaining, “The notion of journaling is something we all still grew up with. There’s something about writing on paper that feels different than typing it. You’re actually creating the words. For some people, it’s nostalgic and provides an element of comfort and familiarity.”

Sandra Abbott, curator of collections and outreach for the CADVC, cites the physical location as a reason for inspiration.

“You’re in a place that’s lush and green and cut off from the hustle and bustle of campus. It forces you to slow down. Handwriting takes longer, but that’s because you have to choose your words carefully and critically since you can’t go back and edit. It gives more weight to your words because you’re being intentional.”

While individuals may put their thoughts to paper and be done with them, that doesn’t mean their story is over. Many entries have annotated words of support or congratulations or commiseration from strangers flipping through the pages. Using the journals as inspiration, Linehan music composition majors performed “Creative Acts,” a site-specific music and dance production. A few students have even used the journal to take a major next step in their lives.

Nate Dissmeyer ’07, information systems management, had his unofficial first date with his wife in the Joseph Beuys Sculpture Park. When the time came to propose to his wife, he “grabbed the journal and suggested she leave an entry about us. While she was writing, I was able to pull out the ring from my pocket and get down on my knee and add that she should include this moment in the journal.”

With more attention being paid to the Joseph Beuys Sculpture Park’s treasures, is there a concern that this hidden gem will lose its luster? “I’ve always been divided because it’s a place that people discover on their own and it’s so special,” said Abbott. “But if everybody keeps it secret, those who really need it may never find it. We want the campus to take advantage of this space. It’s theirs.”

— Kait McCaffrey

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