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(08/27/14 12:05am)
You could be sitting alone in the corner of French class or narrowly stepping around a sleeping body and still do it right. Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, it can always be right around the corner.
(06/30/14 6:36am)
After I graduated from high school, almost all my friends were raring to get out of town and onto campus, eyes sparkling and heart pounding. Their excitement was lovely to see. I remember thinking, “I wish I was this thrilled.”
(05/04/14 4:00am)
Regardless of his or her dream vocation, most every student is driven by passion and ambition.
(05/01/14 4:00am)
If you were on campus between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday or Tuesday, then you probably saw the graphic photos of aborted children, lynched slaves and Jews in concentration camps outside the Student Union. And I'm sure you might have wondered - whether you identified with the anti-abortion or abortion-rights cause - why these offensive photos were being shown.
(04/27/14 4:00am)
Video games. Shakespeare plays. Factory farms. Episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. What do they all have in common?
Violence.
Students from UB and Buffalo State College participated in Western New York's first-ever undergraduate conference on the humanities, "On Violence and Representation" Saturday. Students and other participants presented on the portrayals and implications of violence in literature, entertainment and public policy.
"There could hardly be a more pressing topic for consideration than violence and representation," said Graham Hammill, professor of English the department's chair, during his introductory remarks. "We see and hear of violence and the threat of violence every day. Whether in news reports of civil war in Syria, or the threat of war in Ukraine, in video games ... or in Shakespeare plays."
Following Hammill's introduction, two representatives from the Erie County Commission on the Status of Women, Dr. Karen King, Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Partnership program manager in UB's chemistry department, and Sawrie Becker, commissioner of public advocacy for Erie County, spoke to the audience about domestic violence. Stressing the phenomenon as a local and global issue, King and Becker sought to raise awareness on domestic violence, emphasizing the importance of breaking the cycle of abuse toward women. The commission provides information for victims of abuse and raises money through fundraisers and community projects.
News of upcoming events, including the commission's plan to create a Tribute Garden in Tonawanda to honor lives affected and ended by domestic violence, set a powerful and passionate precedent for the presentations that followed.
"It's an increasing problem, violence against women on college campuses," King said. "And it doesn't always get talked about. It cuts across all lines, and it's not specific to race or class or a particular geographic area. This happens all over our community, and all over the world."
The prevalence of violence within relationships and all representations of violence - literary or otherwise - was the conference's primary concern. The ubiquity of violence in all of its forms intrigued and disturbed both presenters and audience members.
"But are all these representations of violence the same?" Hammill said. "Does the representation of violence spur on further violence, change the meaning of violence or even perhaps nullify its effects? These are essential questions."
The conference split into two concurrent sessions. The first session focused on violence found in Shakespeare plays, while the second featured three diverse presentations on violence in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, war and spirituality and video games.
Three presentations on chemically induced love, female violence and factory farms followed these sessions.
The Executive Steering Committee of Farhana Hasan, a senior linguistics and English major, Kapila Kapoor, a senior English major, Andrew Grabowski, a senior philosophy and English major, and Melissa Pavlovsky, an English major, gave their closing remarks to end the conference. Andrew Stott, dean of undergraduate education and director of the Honors College, presented the awards to the top three presentations.
Sushmita Gelda, a freshman interdisciplinary degree programs social sciences major, won the conference's first place prize for her presentation "Invisible Injustice: How Factory Farm Violence is Under-represented in the United States."
Gelda argued contradictory cultural ideologies, public policy loopholes, the meat industry's rhetoric and misrepresented nutrition facts contribute to a society indifferent and ignorant to the conditions of factory farms.
"Clearly, we know there's a problem," Gelda said. "But there is a refusal to acknowledge the connection between one's actions and the consequences of one's actions. Our desire to remain uninformed about an issue of moral controversy makes [us as a society] morally culpable."
Casey Brescia, a philosophy major at Buffalo State College, won second place for his presentation on the ethics behind a hypothetical love drug, entitled "Who Says You Can't Buy Love?"
Augustus Petko, a senior English major, won third place for his presentation on how orators employ subliminal themes of violence to manipulate their audiences, specifically in The Tragedy of Julius Caesar. The presentation, titled "Veiled Intentions; Rhetoric and the Influence upon an Audience," explored how violence within language is never addressed outright, but exists in allusion.
The conference concluded with audience members and presenters engaged in productive conversation prompted by the thought-provoking presentations. The UB English Club hopes this conference will be the first of many.
"It shows just how committed all [these students] are to research and scholarship," Hammill said. "This conference is a real testament to the kind of intellectual community that's taken shape here at UB."
email: features@ubspectrum.com
(04/24/14 4:00am)
As a 5-year-old, Rebecca Mayville would gaze out the window on long car drives, mesmerized by horses - tall, powerful and gentle creatures. She knew she had to ride.
After three years of begging her parents, she rode her first horse. And after three years of competing at the college level, she's made it to nationals.
Mayville, a senior math major, has been riding horses for over 12 years. This is her fourth and final year as a member of UB's Equestrian Club, and she's the first member in the team's history to qualify for the Intercollegiate Horse Show Association (IHSA) Nationals.
(04/22/14 4:00am)
Lilacs hardly breed in Buffalo, but T. S. Eliot got it right when he wrote that April is the cruelest month.
(04/17/14 4:00am)
With her crystal rings, sparkling laugh and starry eyes, her parents have always said, "all that glitters is Lexi."
(04/10/14 4:00am)
From singing "Amazing Grace" to saying the 'Our Father' prayer in front of chain fences and razor wires, Newman Center students offered religious and emotional support to local prisoners this weekend.
(04/01/14 4:00am)
The act was over, the audience was sitting silently and there was a moment of breathing. Just breathing. Mary Point-Dexter McLaughlin had just seen the act she wrote come to its dramatic conclusion and, in that moment, she knew her work had truly touched the audience.
(03/25/14 4:00am)
A green Starbucks apron, a bright red bow, game tickets and photographs of smiling people - these can transform a barren dorm room into a home.
(03/09/14 5:00am)
How should young people prepare for death? How should college students, in the words of Jean de la Fontaine, a French author of fables, "consider the end?"
(03/04/14 5:00am)
It was a cold November night in New York City. At around 11 p.m., then high school student Valentyna Yasinska drove down the city streets in a car filled with 15 brown paper bags holding sandwiches, fruit and drinks.
(03/02/14 5:00am)
When Cory Russo, a senior business major, couldn't keep up with the Indian Student Assocation's (ISA's) Bollywood moves during practice, he knew exactly what to do: break out the Cotton-Eyed Joe.
(02/23/14 5:00am)
Young men in search of brotherhood often set their eyes upon UB's Greek Life. They pledge for a fraternity for a semester and then become brothers.
(02/16/14 5:00am)
In 17 Norton Hall, Daniel Loebell, a junior Asian studies major with a global gender studies and Chinese minor, stood wearing a red Peking University hoodie, digging deep into his Totoro pencil case. He was looking for a pen while getting ready to make a presentation on his abroad experience in China last semester - one of the best experiences of his life, he said.
(02/11/14 5:00am)
In 1970, Diane Christian saw a sandwich labeled "astronaut" in the vending machine of UB's English department building. She turned to the man next to her and said, "Have you ever eaten an astronaut?"
(02/06/14 5:00am)
As a young boy in a London suburb, James Currie sat improvising on a piano, wearing his mother's clothing and referring to himself as "Lady Beronia Jackson."
(02/02/14 5:00am)
Healthy eating isn't just a habit or a way of life for Hannah Perno, a sophomore environmental science major. It's a passion.
(11/21/13 5:00am)
After reading the Spectrum article entitled "College democrats seek open-minded discussion rather than debate," I was delighted to have the opportunity to engage in respectful and civil discussion with my fellow peers on Planned Parenthood's services. President Quinne Sember was quoted to have said "pro-choice/pro-life debates have gotten old" and her club's focus on "joint discussions rather than debates" sounded like the perfect medium through which I could express my opinion. Here was a club that championed the power of an open mind; that appreciated the diversity of opinion; that encouraged respectful and informed political conversations; whose own flyers advertised "all opinions welcome!" - what could go wrong?