Category: Uncategorized

 

 

 

 

 

The Emory NAACP organized a trip to the Center for Civil and Human Rights on November 4th. From an all too realistic interactive exhibit of the Woolworth Lunch Counter Sit-Ins to alarmingly graphic photos at the Lorraine motel of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., the Center for Civil and Human Rights Museum is nothing short of an intense experience. Upon arrival, there is a beautiful mural that depicts messages throughout the history of human rights.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The museum is divided into multiple exhibits. The first floor is home to the Morehouse College Martin Luther King, Jr. Collection. The second floor is always an exhibit to the American Civil Rights Movement and also, the gift shop. The third floor is an ode to the Global Human Rights Movement. “The exact focus of these exhibits generally change every 4 to 6 months.” stated our opening tour guide.

 

THE MOREHOUSE COLLEGE MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. COLLECTION

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Collection gallery features a rotating exhibition of items from The Morehouse College Martin Luther King, Jr. Collection, where visitors can view the personal papers and items of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The theme currently is “Honoring a Legacy: Women of the Civil Rights Movement.” The role of women is often overlooked when speaking of the legacy of the American Civil Rights Movement. This rotation of the Morehouse College Martin Luther King, Jr. Collection shines a light on some of these outstanding individuals. The exhibits highlights nine women who either inspired, worked alongside or influenced Dr. King in the fight for justice and equality.

 

This exhibit is a “no photography zone,” because of the original documents of MLK, Jr. but I still have a couple covertly snapped pictures of some of the women included.

 

THE AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT GALLERY

 

This one is the most intense, popular, and thorough exhibit in the museum. The Civil Rights Movement gallery presents the brave fight for equality in The American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. There are multiple interactive displays depicting the courageous struggles of individuals working to transform the United States from Jim Crow laws to equal rights for all. The most intense and visceral part of the museum is the interactive Woolworth’s Lunch Counter. Visitors put on noise cancelling headphones and sit in a red chair as a timer starts, “Let’s see how long you last” starts the recording. This daunting statement is followed by voices of racist, whites taunting and cursing at you while the chair is kicked and shaken from all angles. Time after time, people left the exhibit in tears. The museum’s exhibits, particularly this one, tell stories in ways that promote empathy and understanding.

 

 

THE GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENT GALLERY

The Human Rights Movement gallery enables visitors to make connections to the world of human rights. The gallery features interactive technology intended for all audiences to help visitors gain a deeper understanding of human rights and how they affect the lives of every person. With interactive stories of people who have been stripped of their human rights, this exhibit is extremely interactive and attracts international visitors year round.

 

Quite naturally, there was a large focus on states in the South. Whenever there was a button to press for “Louisiana” or “New Orleans,” y’all know I pressed it. Although I was proud to see New Orleans native Mahalia Jackson be featured largely in the women’s exhibit, every other time my home was mentioned I was jarred. I say jarred in a way that is not synonymous with shocked or surprised though, for I am no longer shocked by many things when it comes to the ongoing fight for civil rights in America. I say jarred in a way that evinces my unpleasant or disturbed reaction to Louisiana’s heavy involvement in pushing back against civil rights progress. The headquarters for the Ku Klux Klan was in Shreveport, Louisiana. People were beaten on Freedom Rides to New Orleans. While New Orleans, a cultural and social enclave, is pushing daily to right our wrongs, the state of Louisiana as a whole is decades behind. I hope that as more museums like this promote empathy in the hearts of people nationwide, maybe we will be closer to a more humane society. 

 

And before you say it, I’m not calling graduate students at Emory blood-sucking vampires (though it’s a little debatable sometimes). I just decide to take a unique spin on our Grad Life beat. Often times, we focus on graduate program themselves or graduate student organizations. I feel that we lost the meaning of the beat being the Grad Life, and believe it or not, grad students have lives outside of the academic programs and extracurriculars. (I think).

Working at the Arts at Emory Box Office, I noticed that we get a lot of graduate students coming to see shows. At first, I was a little confused and would think “Don’t they have a dissertation or thesis to defend?” But then I realized that there’s a multitude of reasons that graduate students attend Emory arts events: friends in the show, musicians or composers they’re really fond of, or even just looking for a way to unwind on a Friday night.

Regardless of the reasons, Arts at Emory gives a lot of incentives for graduate students to attend concerts and productions. The first thing is grad students receive the Emory student rate for tickets. Of course, they are Emory students, but grad students pay the same price for tickets undergrads. Sometimes this is surprising to grad students because they aren’t sure if they qualify for the student discount. For example, a ticket for Dracula cost $22 for a full price ticket. With the Emory student discount, a ticket for Dracula is only $6, saving Emory students $16. Since we’re freshman we received an Arts passport at the beginning of the year, so we don’t really think about the prices of tickets. But did you know that any Emory student, include grad students, can buy a passport for $12? You might ask why anyone would buy a passport, but if we go back to the Dracula example, by using a passport students can get a ticket for “free.” Another incentive that grad students get that undergrads don’t is that grad students can buy two tickets at the Emory Student price and can use a passport for two tickets to each show/show run. Undergraduates only get one ticket at the Emory Student price and can only use a passport for one ticket to each show/show run. This means by using a passport to get two tickets for Dracula grad students already get their money back, and they still have all school year to get more tickets with the passport.

As I mentioned before, grad students do have lives outside of their programs. They like to see shows with friends and enjoy hearing concerts. And a lot of times they are some of the nicest customers and it’s easier to deal with grad students that somewhat know what their doing in terms of buying tickets than the confused freshman that love to come in the day of a show right before it starts with a passport to a sold-out or almost sold-out show so they can get a PACE requirement done.

The Arts at Emory Box Office is open Monday-Friday from noon-6:00pm. We also open up the box office an hour before any ticketed event (location depends on event). For more information, you can visit the Box Office at 1700 N Decatur Rd #251, Atlanta, GA 30322 or call (404) 727-5050. Click here for a calendar of upcoming events.

T-K-E-S-H-E-L-A-S-H-V-I-L-I.

Sounds like an extinct dinosaur but it’s actually my last name! By the time you’ve gotten to this post, I’m sure that you’re already going to be familiar with my full name. When I say familiar with, I don’t expect you to know how to spell it or pronounce it correctly. I only know of 4 people that can successfully do so with my name, 2 of them are my parents, 1 is my little sister and the other is my roommate at my old boarding school of 2 years. I mention 2 years because that’s how long it took him to be able to pronounce it. Oh, and now there’s also Hunter who can throw a half-decent attempt at it.

Although originally from The Republic of Georgia, I moved to the state of Georgia about 3.5 years ago (Ironic! Isn’t it?). Let me just mention that it’s very bizarre explaining to people that there’s a country called Georgia.

“I’m from Georgia and I speak Georgian!”
“You mean English? Because you do know that Georgia is part of the United States and they speak English there”

“No, listen….”

“Ok…you’re not very smart, are you?”

That’s a conversation I have quite often.

The Republic of Georgia is a failing nation – a country full of all sorts of turmoil and poverty, is still my home. There are many people in various regions of Georgia who, to this day, don’t have direct access to simple, but critical, things such as clean water, electricity, and healthcare. Not to mention a lack of education. But my experiences with moving and displacement are for the next Dooley Special, for now, is one part of my life that truly shaped me.

Being a native of the Republic of Georgia has had a significant effect on my life. Then there’s the whole aspect of me being from a generation of war.

Growing up I shared an apartment with my parents, uncle, aunt, cousin, and grandparents in a large complex on the outskirts of Tbilisi, the capital city. To do the math, there were 8 of us in a 3-bedroom apartment. My grandparents had actually gotten the apartment in a soviet lottery, that’s how things worked back then. If you didn’t have money to bribe officials you would have to be placed on a very long waitlist to get a half-decent 2-bedroom apartment. But that’s a whole different story. I remember I would run down in the huge yard that used to surround our apartment building and meet my friends to start playing football(soccer) or rugby on the football field.

I remember almost every other day, I would decide that I either wanted ice-cream or some sort of candy from the local supermarket 1 block away. I’d run to back to my apartment, the 2 windows of my room would be facing me, and start screaming “Bebooo… Baabbuu” (translated to grandma and grandpa in English) to ask them for what is the equivalent of 0.80 cents in US dollars. Most of the times I would get the requested amount, sometimes, however, they wouldn’t have that much to give me for my silly candies. I was raised to be very humble in general, so I would never complain or ask again for the next 2 days because looking over at my friends, I knew that they wouldn’t get those 0.80 cents thrown down to them for weeks because of the financial difficulties their families were going through.

I remember one day seeing someone buy this big robotic dinosaur at the store, and asking my mom if I could have one too, her looking back at me and shaking her head implying that we didn’t really have enough at the time. We just had enough for the products that we were there to buy. I would smile back at her so as to not make her sad, but from her voice tone and every now and then teary eyes, I would know that my smile wasn’t always enough.

After those stories, you must be ironically thinking to yourself “One big happy family, eh?” The truth is, we were. There was nothing but laughter radiating from our windows, from early morning to late nights.

That laughter was completely silenced in 2008 when Russia invaded Georgia, yeah, I know this sounds like the whole but “But everything changed when the fire nation attacked” from the Avatar: The Last Airbender, but truthfully it was far from it. I remember my mother hurrying me over to a friend’s house and sitting together awaiting the moment when it would be officially announced that we were under siege.

My dad called us from a village called Gori that was currently being bombed and where Russian soldiers would strip Georgian soldiers naked to string them up on light poles as a form of embarrassment. He said that he was there with the President and Minister of Defense and that combined they had enough army and security resources to make it out fine, but that the tanks were slowly approaching the capital city, Tbilisi. However, a few days after international leaders intervened in what was going to be a countrywide occupation, I remember standing hand-in-hand with my parents and endless others to form a human circle of strength around Tbilisi, a chain that extended over 60 miles.

Post-war there were multitudes of Georgians who had been forced out of the occupied regions. Many displaced families sought refuge in camps neighbouring our home in the city. Most mothers from Tbilisi volunteered to take care of the refugee children, many of whom had been orphaned. It took days of convincing, but my mother eventually agreed it was okay for me to take my soccer ball to the camp where she was serving. That summer, on the ill-maintained playgrounds of Tbilisi, I made many new friends, found some “rivals” – and I met Gocha.

Russian soldiers and their heavy artillery tore apart Gocha’s family, but they did not take away his playfulness. Perhaps we were both too young at the time – Gocha, a year older than me – to truly understand the torments of becoming an orphaned child. I could barely picture how lonely he must have felt because he never shared his sadness.

Gocha and I were a lot alike. Both quick to raise our hands when it was time to volunteer to be captains for a soccer game. Both bent on picking the best players for our teams. A week in, we had all become ferociously competitive, and fights were common – especially when we could not agree on whether a goal had been scored. Stones and rocks, piled up to make goalposts, got the job done, but not very well.

One such fight became unnecessarily ugly. Gocha pushed me, and I tugged at him, tearing apart what I later learned was his only shirt. At the end of the game, my teammates pressured me to apologize to my shirtless opponent. I talked myself into walking up to him – rather begrudgingly and uncomfortably. Gocha looked over at me as I rehearsed under my breath what I was going to say and, as I was about to start, he shamelessly broke into a fit of giggles. I smiled back, more confused than guilty. I realize that despite everything that had happened to him, he could still find it in him to laugh, or at least smile.

The next day I brought him some of my shirts as an apology. All of them fit, and a loyal bond was sealed. I even remember him laughing at one of the shirts because it had a pony, drawn on it by me.

At this point, I know I will spend a lifetime spelling my name and clarifying its pronunciation. I know my country will find it difficult to survive – the population of the Republic of Georgia steadily decreasing to the point where a century from now the number of citizens is predicted to drop from 3.4 million to one million. Despite all of that, I know, because I was there, that aggression does not overpower compassion.  War is devastating. But does it mean we stop looking for joy and happiness? That we can no longer smile? That we turn our backs on acts of kindness? That we subdue our natural personalities? No. As I have learned, sometimes all it takes is a soccer ball and 8 new shirts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Wednesday night, the Emory Black Law Student Association crossed Clifton Road and met up with the Emory Black Pre Law Society to answer questions regarding the dos and don’ts of undergraduate life when you are preparing for law school in the future. The attendance for this event was lower than any other Black Pre Law Society event thus far, surprisingly. It was mostly law school students and seniors in the college. The discussion took place in the form of a panel.

 

Who was on the panel?

 

• A first year law student (referred to as a “1L”)
• A third year law student who also had the perspective of working in the law school admissions office and is a transfer student (“3L”)
• A non-practicing attorney who attended Hampton and Mercer Law, she has a law based Youtube channel(“AT”)

 

The moderator asked a question to the panel and they could respond as they felt appropriate and often times would “piggyback” off of each other’s answers and throw in more tips and strategies. Some of the most fitting questions for first years and their most helpful and common answers are listed below!

 

Why did you decide to go to law school? What type of law are you planning to practice?

 

1L: I had no intentions of going to law school until my senior year of college. I had a fashion degree from FIT and found a way to combine that with law after having tons of discussions with one of my professors and just went from there.

3L: I have known since high school. Law school was just always the route for me. I plan to practice labor and unemployment law.

AT: I have a weirder story. Everyone in my family has been divorced at least once, so I just knew divorce law was for me. I wanted to have a huge billboard off the side of 85. Now I am in law school recruitment instead so you never know where your JD will take you.

 

How did you study for the LSAT?

 

1L: I used the Blueprint test prep course, and a whole lot of brutal self study.

3L: I used the Kaplan test prep, but would not recommend it at all. Kaplan isn’t individualistic enough and if I had to do it all over, I would get a private tutor.

AT: I did the Kaplan live online course, and very little self study. I only got a 140 the first time, so I did the in class Kaplan to bring up my score. If I could do it all over, I would take at least 30 practice exams.  

 

Do you have any tips for writing the personal statement?

 

3L: Emory wants to know what you learned from your experiences and how you plan to implement that in the Emory community. Your personal statement doesn’t have to be some life changing event, they would rather see something you’re passionate about than a really prestigious award.

AT: BE PERSONAL! Stop being hella generic. If I never have to see the sentence, “I have been through so much adversity,” I would be happy. For most law schools, there is no interview aspect so your personal statement needs to be very telling.

• tell a story or have a consistent theme
• talk about specific law school plans (what kind of law you want to practice)
• talk about specific reasons you are applying to the law school you’re applying to

 

What was most important when you were choosing law schools?

 

1L

1. Scholarships
2. Connections
3. Location

 

3L:

1. Diversity
2. Location
3. Scholarships

 

AT:

1. Diversity
2. Black Law Student Association Presence
3. Location/Cost of Living

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOIR76M6CIk

 

Overall, I feel that the small crowd size made for a comfortable, more informal environment. The panelists were open and really wanted to see the undergraduate students succeed. They offered their cards to attendees and encouraged us to keep our studies first. I also think the panelist’s different backgrounds allowed them to have a wide variety of perspectives on the law school application experience, yet they still firmly agreed with each other on certain things.

 

https://youtu.be/bfm7COvsGAs

The excitement had been building for weeks. Everytime my aunt’s name popped up on my phone, I would smirk because I knew it would be something pertaining to the surprise that we were planning for my mawmaw and pawpaw. I had bought my plane ticket and began to make my packing list. The only people who knew I was coming were my aunt and my mom. More than tired of food from the duc-ling, I submitted my list of meal requests to my mom so she could bless me with some home-cooked meals. From the smothered turkey necks to the shrimp and grits, to the spaghetti and meatsauce, to the meat pies, I might have gained my freshman 15 in this one week.

Spending time with my family gave me the refreshed feeling I was looking for but it also completely obliterated my sense of homesickness. I am completely fine with not seeing my family until Thanksgiving. My curfew went back into effect while I was home, there were many more chores to do than there are in my small dorm room, and everyone wanted to know who I was dating and what was my decided major.

My short time in Natchitoches was pretty eventful. I got to take professional pictures with my godson, be diagnosed with pneumonia, and finally go to mass at my church. I was able to spend time with my brother for the weekend. The best part of my weekend was everyone talked super fast and nobody commented on my accent.

Close your eyes and think back to home.Is home in Georgia? Is it far away from Georgia? Is it on the West Coast or East Coast? Is it in the MidWest? Is it out of the country? Now imagine a law has passed stating that you can never live anywhere outside of your home state. How would that affect your enrollment at Emory? In what ways would you be limited? As horrible as this sounds, this scenario was reality for many Jews between the years 1791 to 1917, during which the Pale of Settlement was established.

The Pale of Settlement was an area apart of Russian territory that allowed Jews permanent residency, but forbade them from taking up residency anywhere else, which crushed the dreams of many young people who wanted to pursue a higher education outside the borders of the Pale of Settlement. However a loophole was found with the issuing of yellow tickets: a nickname for the identification cards that were given to Russian prostitutes that allowed them to live outside the borders. Many Jewish women took on the titles of prostitutes in order to expand their rights and live or go to school wherever they wanted, and The Yellow Ticket is a 1918 film that depicts such a scenario.

When one of our group members, Rachel, first rushed in, trying to find where the movie was located with only two minutes left before it started, a girl walking behind her stated that one of her friends told her the movie was filled with prostitution, which immediately had Rachel questioning Emory University’s taste in film. But we were pleased to find The Yellow Ticket was an engaging film about the struggles of a young woman who loses everything and must take on a double life as a prostitute and university student in order to have a chance at a better life.

Leaning back in our seats in the Emerson Concert Hall at Schwartz Performing Arts Center, we had no idea what to expect. We had just bought tickets to see the silent film The Yellow Ticket accompanied by a live score. Having never attended an event like this before, we had no idea what to expect.

The lights went dim, and the three performers were introduced: composer Alicia Svigals, pianist Marilyn Lerner, and clarinetist Laura DeLuca. It was easy to tell who was the star of the show: Alicia’s long red dress immediately captured the spotlight.

Svigals, the world’s leading klezmer fiddler, founded the Grammy-winning Klezmatics and has collaborated with many renowned musical artists. She has also made appearances on shows such as David Letterman, MTV, and more. She is the recipient of the Foundation for Jewish Culture’s 2013 New Jewish Music Network Commission for her score of the Yellow Ticket.

Lerner’s musical style is seasoned with multiple different cultures, performing internationally from Montreal to Havana to Jerusalem. She is a recording artist, and has also toured with other groups of performers.

DeLuca started playing in the Seattle symphony in 1986 and is one of the founders of Seattle Chamber Players. Aside from performing in concert halls all around the world, she has been featured in more than one hundred recordings and has collaborated with distinguished composers and performers.

Beautiful music filled the concert hall the very second the film began, and the tone perfectly matched the mood of each scene. Alicia’s singing voice perfectly complimented the strings she played, matching with her partners beside her. We watched as the music got louder and darker during the dramatic scenes and soft during the comedic ones. The audience, consisting mostly of older adults and a few college students here and there, was captivated by the abilities of the performers and the emotions they evoked from the film.

One student in our group, Michael, was able to meet Alicia Svigals as she came to speak to his Music in Film class. Svigals stressed the effort and thought she put into every second of the film as she essentially lived in her studio for two whole months. With The Yellow Ticket being a silent film, Svigals said that she wanted to “make the narrative more clear and bring out the emotion” of the film. Though looking back at it, Svigals said that scoring the film from second to second was a “rookie move”, she is constantly fascinated with how such precision in the score makes each performance slightly different and unique. She explained that playing in complete unison with the score and film was essentially impossible with the amount of detail she put into every scene. Though at first this seemed like a detriment to her work, Svigals came to realize that each performance acted as a snowflake, patterned differently and completely unique from the others.  

Svigals also stressed how the film is filled with unknowns. From the very beginning, the director gives little background information or hints about the setting or main character, Sofia. Instead of trying to make sense of these unknowns, Svigals took advantage of this and layered the score with music from multiple cultures. This melting pot of different sounds emphasized this unknown as Sofia takes us on her journey to St. Petersburg. When viewing the film with Svigals’ score, one might notice that some melodies repeat themselves throughout the movie. Svigals created these specific melodies to represent different emotions and gestures. As Sofia makes the final decision to become a prostitute Svigals plays a melody of shame with a diminished harmony and a strong sense of darkness. This melody appears every time Sofia is seen working her night job in her alternate life. Along with shame, Svigals composed a waltz melody to symbolize romance as Sofia’s classmate quickly fall in love with her. The melody is layered with the three instruments and composed perfectly to bring out the growing feeling of love that falls within Sofia’s story.

Following the performance was a twenty minute Q&A with the artists. Audience members asked about the creation of the score, how they keep up with timing and precision, and the personal lives of the artists in general.

This performance of The Yellow Ticket was a very interesting and unique experience. We enjoyed observing the passion and excitement of the performers which was shared by the audience. The show brought to our attention the effects that music has on the emotions that a film portrays. We left the concert hall impressed, enlightened, and inspired.

 

By Rachel McNeil, Kate Monger, and Michael Malenfant

Green, David B. “1791: Catherine the Great tells Jews where they can live.” Haaretz.com, 26 Dec. 2016, www.haaretz.com/jewish/features/.premium-1.564905. Accessed 11 Sept. 2017.

“JewishEncyclopedia.com.” PALE OF SETTLEMENT – JewishEncyclopedia.Com, www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/11862-pale-of-settlement. Accessed 11 Sept. 2017

“Pale of Settlement.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 27 Aug. 2017, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_of_Settlement#Jewish_life_in_the_Pale. Accessed 11 Sept. 2017.

“Yellow ticket.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 30 July 2017, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_ticket. Accessed 11 Sept. 2017.

Hello, class!

Use this site to publish your blog posts.  You are creating posts, not pages.

Remember to use the guide linked to my announcement to help you get started.  We can work through anything that is difficult when we return to class, but try your best to post on your own for the first time.   This is diagnostic test #2 (trial and error for your digital literacy).  I repeat: try your best.  The weight of your first post in terms of grading will be mostly in content and analysis.

Happy posting!