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Transy students join MLK Day march at time of voting rights fights

Tristan Reynolds
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Transy students join MLK Day march at time of voting rights fights

Approximately 25 Transy students joined this morning’s Martin Luther King Jr. memorial march in downtown Lexington. Transy’s participation was organized by the Black Student Alliance (BSA) in conjunction with the University’s Athletics Department.

Junior Taryn Glass said that it was important to “always remember” the legacy of Dr. King, and that the march “helps us stay together as a community.”

Glass, who is affiliated with BSA, said that it was important for BSA to be involved because BSA “represent[s] the small minority on this campus” of black students. She said that being organized shows that “ we can overcome and we can still be together.”

The students were joined by several University staff & administration members, as well as by BSA faculty adviser Dr. Veronica Dean-Thacker.

Dr. Michael Covert, the Dean of Student Life, said that he “want[s] to support the students and support the mission of the MLK march.” He felt it was important “for the Transylvania community to be a part of that.”

Te’Asia Martin, the Assistant Director of Diversity & Campus Engagement, said that she was “really excited that the Athletic Department supported this.” Martin noted that the “better portion” of the students in attendance came from either the BSA or the Athletic teams. She also noted that the Student Organization for Latinos (SOL) and other groups were represented.

The march, which began from the Lexington Convention Center and ran in a loop around the downtown area, lasted from 10:00am to approximately 10:45am. The marchers ranged from the generally apolitical to the more politically engaged, with some carrying signs reading “Stop Racism Now” and calling for “Racial Justice Now!”

The annual holiday comes at a time when Kentucky courts are considering a racially disparate felon disenfranchisement system that is the subject of both a state-level lawsuit and a political fight in the Legislature. Nearly one in four black Kentuckians are currently barred from voting for life; Kentucky is one of only two states to impose lifetime voting bans on felons.

Dr. King spent much of his career working to advance voting rights for black Americans, especially in the South. Those efforts resulted in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Substantial portions of the Voting Rights Act were declared unenforceable by a 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court in 2013, in the case Shelby County v. Holder; voting rights advocates at the time called it a decision that would “enact measures with potentially devastating consequences on political participation by communities of color.” In the years since the Shelby County decisions, there have been many new restrictions placed on voting rights, especially in the South.

BSA partners with other campus organizations for MLK Week

Taylor Mahlinger
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BSA partners with other campus organizations for MLK Week

Transy kicks off celebrations for Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday, with a schedule of events that span the entire week. We spoke to the president of Transy’s Black Student Alliance (BSA), Jonathan Neal, and the president of Transy’s Interfaith Alliance, Seth Wyatt, to gain some context on what events will be happening all week, and why BSA is working to bring so many events together.

“We really wanted to do this because we thought it was necessary and hasn’t been done in the past. It’s time for our school to start celebrating culture” said Neal.

Monday: MLK Day March
Tuesday: Screening of Selma
Wednesday: Lecture by Dr. Christopher Brown
Thursday: No Events
Friday: Lecture by April Ryan @ UK

Transy’s Black Student Alliance has partnered with many different organizations on campus for the MLK Week events, like the Student Activities Board, The Interfaith Alliance, the Athletic Department, SPEAKOut Spoken Word, and Delta Sigma Phi. They’re also partnering with the University of Kentucky for events coming up in February for Black History Month.

“One of the BSA’s goals this year was to connect the campus more as a family and as one unit because in the past we’ve been kind of disconnected as organizations, and we haven’t really connected with each other. The BSA really just wants to partner with everyone and jump on board because we wanna create this family feel on campus because we’re going through so many changes and we’re gonna need that here in the future,” said Neal.

Seth Wyatt, President of the Interfaith Alliance, said “I think that diversity is something we’ve been able to sort of congregate around on the campus, and I think it’s nice to see that diversity is important and that this is one of the big issues that campus organizations are coming around. It’s really encouraging for Transy’s future as an institution.”

Monday

The first event is the Lexington March on Monday. “On that day we will be meeting in the Campus Center and we’re asking all of the student organizations to wear their student t-shirts because we really wanna celebrate unity because it is MLK week and that was one of the things he stood for.” said Neal. Students will meet in the Campus Center at 9:15am to walk over to the Lexington Center for the march. This year’s march is unique because BSA has asked Coach Lane, in addition to Transy’s basketball team, to lead the front of Transy in the Lexington March. “We’re including them in the march this year and the basketball team is hopefully gonna play a key part in the march” said Neal. 

“Making athletics part of what we’re doing on the campus is essential” said Wyatt, “To ignore that whole community, as big as it is, when pushing for things like diversity and inclusion and religious inclusion is totally ridiculous. That’s such a large swath of the campus, you can’t ignore that. Too often, it does get ignored and that’s another thing we don’t want to leave by the wayside.”

Tuesday

On Tuesday, BSA will hold a screening and discussion of the movie Selma in Cowgill at 6:30pm. “That’s one of the big partnership events that we will be having with Delta Sigma Phi and Interfaith Alliance with Seth” said Neal. “On that day we will be discussing the movie ‘Selma’ and we will also be showing a video that we produced that asked several staff members and students around campus what Martin Luther King Week means to them and what his dream means to them.” Along with the movie discussion, there will also be an all-you-can-eat chicken fundraiser for Common Good that costs $4 per person or 2/$5.  “All of the proceeds will be going to Common Good for MLK Week and Black History Month from the BSA. It will also be to support an office of Multicultural and Diversity in the Campus Center. That’s one of the big goals of this and why we’re putting it on.”

Wednesday

Dr. Christopher Brown II, the current President of Kentucky State University, will be visiting Carrick Theater on Wednesday evening. “The doors will be open at six which is when you wanna arrive, and 6:30 is when he’ll start. After that, we will have Common Good coming and students from Common Good.” said Neal.

Friday

Another exciting event for Transy students comes at the end of MLK Week. “We will be going to UK on Friday to see speaker April Ryan, who is an American journalist who was slammed by Trump” said Neal. “The BSA will be sponsoring two vans in partnership with the Transy Athletic Department, and when they’re filled, we’ll go.” They will be meeting at 5:30pm in the Campus Center lobby.

“It’s really easy when pushing for diversity and inclusion to forget about stuff like religious inclusion, and I appreciate that people like Jonathan and Taran [McZee, Associate Vice President for DIversity & Inclusion] who work in other areas of the university have made a point to include people of diverse religious backgrounds in honoring people who are both racial justice and religious leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. or Abraham Joshua Heschel who marched with MLK in Selma.” said Wyatt.

“We’re getting to the point on campus where organizations are relaxed and comfortable working together in a way that they haven’t been before. Hopefully that’s a precedent we set so that after we graduate, people continue that,” said Wyatt.

Click here for a full list of the MLK Week events at Transy.

Further Reading: Scientists Call for Drastic Drop in Emissions. U.S. Appears to Have Gone the Other Way.

Transy Rambler
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Further Reading: Scientists Call for Drastic Drop in Emissions. U.S. Appears to Have Gone the Other Way.

This article is republished from ProPublica under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. The original article was written by Abraham Lustgarten. 

The signals are blaring: Dramatic changes to our climate are well upon us. These changes — we know thanks to a steady drumbeat of alarming official reports over the past 12 months — could cripple the U.S. economy, threaten to make vast stretches of our coastlines uninhabitable, make basic food supplies scarce and push millions of the planet’s poorest people into cities and across borders as they flee environmental perils.

All is not yet lost, we are told, but the demands of the moment are great. The resounding consensus of scientists, economists and analysts tells us that the solution lies in an unprecedented global effort to immediately and drastically drop carbon emissions levels. That drop is possible, but it will need to happen so fast that it will demand extraordinary commitment, resolve, innovation and, yes, sacrifice. The time we’ve got to work with, according to the United Nations, is a tad more than 10 years.

And so it stings particularly badly to learn from a new report released this week by the Rhodium Group, a private research company, that U.S. emissions — which amount to one-sixth of the planet’s — didn’t drop in 2018 but instead skyrocketed. The 3.4 percent jump in CO2 for 2018, projected by the Rhodium Group, would be second-largest surge in greenhouse gas emissions from the United States since 1996, when Bill Clinton was president.

The report notes that Americans consumed significantly more electricity in 2018 than in years past, and that demand for trucking (think shipping) and jet fuel (lots more people flew) also grew substantially. More alarming are the large jumps in U.S. emissions from industry and from buildings — which the report’s authors note are largely “ignored in clean energy and climate policymaking.” Heating and cooking-related emissions from old, often-inefficient buildings jumped 10 percent, in part due to a growing population and despite a warmer-than-average winter. As manufacturing was buoyed by the strong economy, the emissions the sector produced jumped by nearly 6 percent. The Rhodium Group forecasts those emissions will continue to grow.

Until now, it had seemed we were making modest, if insufficient, progress, largely, many experts declared, as coal-fired power plants were phased out and replaced with natural gas, which burns cleaner out of the smokestack. For two decades, U.S. emissions had been steadily dropping, chipping off more than 1 percent annually in most years since peaking in 2007. But the pace of the decline had been slowing and now threatens to put emissions reduction goals set by the Paris accord — to cut emissions to at least 26 percent less than 2005 levels by 2025 — out of reach.

There are plenty of reasons the Rhodium Group report’s conclusions aren’t particularly surprising. The rate of growth it describes dovetails with what the U.S. Energy Information Administration predicted late last year: a roughly 3 percent rise in CO2 from U.S. sources. As far back as 2015, a flurry of academic research raised questions about whether the drop in U.S. emissions was indeed due to successful efforts to curb them or instead reflected the 2008-09 recession. At least one prominent study concluded that U.S. efforts to reduce emissions resulted mostly from economic decline, not other efforts. Even the increasing emissions from U.S. industries — the metric most cited from this week’s Rhodium Group research — may prove to be a red herring: Economists and climate scientists have long argued that global trade merely outsourced U.S. emissions.

In the meantime, some climate deniers — including some in the Trump administration — have seized on earlier reports of dropping emissions to argue that aggressive U.S. emissions controls aren’t necessary. “The economy is booming, energy production is surging, and we are reducing greenhouse gas emissions from major industrial sources,” acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler wrote last October. “Federal regulations are not necessary to drive CO2 reductions.” That thinking was offered as partial justification for everything from the reversal of the Clean Power Plan to phase out coal-generated electricity to the relaxation of fuel economy standards for cars.

This week’s emissions forecast is a reminder that, as John McArthur, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution recently wrote, “Every new unit of economic gain is still cranking out a corresponding unit of environmental pain.” That may be unlikely to change soon, and the “urgent” challenge for 2019, he writes, is to find palatable approaches to drastic emissions reductions that still allow for the kind of sustained economic growth the nation has been enjoying. Until or unless the economy can be decoupled from the emissions associated with driving it, the fastest way to curb CO2 is to produce — and buy and consume — less.

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

Further Reading: More solutions needed for campus hunger

Transy Rambler
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Further Reading: More solutions needed for campus hunger

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. The original article was written by Suzanna Martinez, Academic Researcher, University of California, San Francisco. 

A new federal report does a good job of explaining what many researchers have been saying for a decade – food insecurity among college students is a serious national problem.

As one University of California, Berkeley student revealed in an interview for a 2018 research article I helped write: “Food is always on my mind: ‘Do I have enough money? Maybe I should skip a meal today so I can have enough food for dinner.‘”

However, when it comes to offering up solutions, the new report from the Government Accountability Office comes up short.

My experience as one who has researched campus hunger goes back to 2014, when colleagues and I conducted the first public university system wide survey of campus hunger. We found that over 40 percent of University of California students – about half of all undergraduates and one out of every four graduate students – faced food insecurity. That is more than three times the national household rate of 12 percent. Food security is generally defined as access at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life.

Our findings on campus hunger have been replicated in the University of California system, the California State University system and in colleges throughout the nation.

Effects of an empty stomach

For those who are food secure, it might be easy to scoff at the notion that somehow college students can’t find enough to eat. The reality is hunger among college students has psychological impacts that affect student performance. For instance, in a 2018 study, colleagues and I found students experiencing food insecurity had a lower grade point average than students not facing food insecurity.

Researchers and I also found that not having access to enough food at all times increased a student’s risk for poor mental health. This, in turn, increases their risk for lower grades.

So what does the latest federal report – released 10 years after the first study documenting hunger on campus – say about the problem and what should be done about it?

The new federal report states that from nine to over 50 percent of America’s college students face food insecurity. The report also reveals that of the two to three million students at-risk for food insecurity who were potentially eligible for participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program – more commonly known as SNAP – only 43 percent were receiving those benefits.

More solutions needed

The report recommends that government administrators do more to make students aware of their potential eligibility for SNAP benefits. The low participation rate in SNAP may stem from lack of awareness of exemptions for eligibility. Or it could have to do with the stigma of receiving food assistance. Some organizations recommend campus-based initiatives to combat food insecurity in order to lessen the stigma associated with receiving food assistance for students.

Will better SNAP guidance end student hunger? In my view as one who has been looking at this issue for some time, not entirely.

For example, college students cannot get SNAP benefits unless they meet certain criteria, such as working at least 20 hours a week and attending school full-time. This rule should perhaps be rethought in light of how difficult it is to go to school full-time, keep up one’s grades and work more than 20 hours a week.

What else can we do to fix student hunger? Updating college student financial aid is one solution. For instance, the purchasing power of the Pell grant – a federal grant for low- to middle-income students – is at a 40-year low.

Another solution is to extend the Federal School Lunch Program, which could help pick up the slack for the lost purchasing power of the Pell grant.

In my view, more assistance should also be given to graduate students, who also face campus hunger but who were not mentioned in the new federal report.

Lastly, students must be better educated on things such as financial aid, personal budgeting and self-advocacy. At a time when the cost of going to college is becoming more difficult to cover, it’s more important than ever to help students succeed and be healthy so that they can lead future generations.

 

Gallery Review: “Data, Mine”

Grace Morrison
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Gallery Review: “Data, Mine”

Morlan Gallery’s current exhibition, “Data, Mine,” opened on January 16th. The show features the work of the artists Hasan Elahi and Laurie Frick, and is exactly what it sounds like: art depicting a plethora of rather personal data, taking shape in squares of mundanity.

The artists “address issues of cultural migration and disappearance, self-surveillance, and relationships through a variety of technological processes from data mining to personal monitoring.”

“Nightly Sleep Analyzed” by Laurie Frick. Photo by Gabby Crooks

Laurie Frick’s Nightly Sleep Analyzed embodies this mining of data in a personal way. The piece is a composition of wooden cubes attached to laser cut wood, with each size and color of block representing “daytime sociability” and “city” respectively. The x-axis quantifies hours of sleep and the y runs through the 52 weeks of the year. The resulting graph resembles pixels coming together to form an image.

Similary, Frick’s Seven Days a Woman compiles the quotidian into colorful leather strips, creating bands of, well, data. The widest sections are crimson, the color of sleep. Seeing it evokes a sense of loss. All that time spent sleeping is glaring. It warns of wasted days and ticking clocks.

Frick’s other pieces, such as Processing Interface_1 and Daily Activities, are similar in that they too are composed of colorful rectangles. Her catalogue of data is a reference to the technology that constantly monitors us, but the distinct presence of humanness in her work contradicts that. The rectangles and squares are wobbly and misshapen. The handwriting is not a font. Can we retain our identities in the midst of a mechanized and digitalized world?

“Seven Days a Woman”, “Upper Walk”, and “Upset Stomach” all by Laurie Frick. Photo by Gabby Crooks.

Hasan Elahi was mistakenly added to a terrorist watch list and placed under surveillance by the FBI. His print Woodland is steeped in implication. From far away, it appears to be a large camouflage pattern. Upon closer inspection, it is a grid of pictures. There are toilets, cars, airports, plates of food, mountains, chairs, apartments, freeways, and the inside of a refrigerator.

“Woodland” by Hasan Elahi. Photo by Gabby Crooks

Elahi’s Continuum, a 20-minute video loop, depicts a series of merging images. They are snatches of unremarkable scenes; offices, lecture halls, restaurants, an airport. Just as one image comes into focus, it fades into the next.

Exhibits from “Data, Mine” at the Morlan Gallery. Photo by Gabby Crooks

If there is one thing missing from Elahi’s art, it is human presence. Unlike Frick’s pieces, his are standardized. There aren’t even people in his pictures. However, this is not to say that they aren’t personal. To be watched, either secretly by the government or through inescapable technological channels, is an inimitable mark of our developing society. Elahi’s work suggests that when our lives are laid bare for the powers that be to pick apart, our intrinsic humanity is lost. We are reduced to data, camouflaged in a greater purpose.

“Data, Mine” is a thought-provoking glimpse into our lives from the perspective of technology. We sleep, eat, work, and watch Netflix. We also think important thoughts, dream vividly, and love passionately, but none of this is recorded. Anyone interested in how the Digital age has redefined our privacy, relationships, and sense of self should visit the Morlan Gallery. It might make you want to stick some tape over your laptop camera.

Rambler Retrospective: Cartoonish Tuition Hikes

Brandon Trapp
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Rambler Retrospective: Cartoonish Tuition Hikes

 

I can’t imagine a world in which $75 is a “hike” in tuition. If only they knew.

A little over 60 years ago today, Forrer was nearing completion of some new lounges for each floor. We all know how this story ends.



This is the part where I comment on how good our cartoons used to be. If you want to do cartoons for us please contact us. We’ll pay you. (That’s not a joke. We’ll actually pay you.)

Rambler Blog & Playlist: January 18th

Taylor Mahlinger
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Rambler Blog & Playlist: January 18th

Hey Y’all!

We made it through another week which means it’s time for more music videos and events! I’ve compiled four videos that are either currently trending on YouTube or are still favorites even though they’re from the later part of 2018. As always, email song or music video suggestions for next week’s blog to tmahlinger20@transy.edu!

This music video was filmed in a rather unique way, without all of the glitz and glamour, because it captures each artist’s story about where they grew up and their first loves by displaying short, narrative lines and descriptions across the video. This is benny blanco’s first time coming out from behind the scenes as an award-winning songwriter, making this his debut single as an artist! The “Eastside” music video was originally released in July of 2018 on the same day that the song was released which created a lot of buzz, especially on Twitter among some of blanco’s famous friends.

This beautiful ballad has a music video that’s just as deep as the song’s lyrics. The young singer-songwriter Billie Eilish collaborated with another young artist, Khalid, to release this tune in April of 2018, which was featured in the first season of the popular Netflix show, 13 Reasons Why. The music video gained 13 million views in less than a month with its stunning cinematography and powerful message. Although this video might put you deep in your feels, it’s definitely worth the watch at least once.

Here’s the music video for Post Malone’s latest smash hit, “Sunflower.” It was originally released in October of 2018 as a single and as part of the soundtrack for “Spide-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.” The music video for the song consists of clips from the movie that came out in December. As someone who hasn’t seen the movie, I actually really liked this music video because as the lead character bounces around the screen, Post Malone and Swae Lee’s lyrics appear on buildings and in corners, so it’s almost like a fun game of iSpy.

This retro music video featuring Gucci Mane, Bruno Mars, and Kodak Black takes swag to the next level. The hit “Wake up in the sky” was released in September 2018 and has been streamed over 180 million times on Spotify alone. The music video is mostly the three of them hitting smooth moves and serenading you in sparkling suits with enough shimmer to blind viewers. Need I list any more reasons for you to watch this video?

Take it easy,

Taylor

As for arts events this week, we have a few!

Friday, January 18th @5pm, Downtown Lexington

It’s time for the Lexington Gallery Hop! This hop is a free, fun way to visit all of the art galleries and artist studios downtown and surround yourself with local artwork! Transy’s Morlan Gallery located in the Mitchell Fine Arts building is participating in the hop from 5pm-8pm with its latest exhibit, Data, Mine! You can find a full map of the participating art galleries here!

Monday, January 21 @9:15am, Campus Center Lobby

While these aren’t really considered arts events, the Martin Luther King Jr. events are important to Transy as a campus community. There will be a campus meetup for the Lexington March at 9:15am in the Campus Center lobby! This is the only event on the actual holiday, but you can find the full list of events that span the entire week here.

Thursday, January 24th @6pm, MFA’s Morlan Gallery

There will be an art talk with renowned data visualization artists Laurie Frick and Hasan Elahi who are the renowned artists of the brand new exhibit, Data, Mine. This exhibit is inspired by artistic takes on the data that computers gather on us and how it is used. The exhibit is part of the New Frontiers series here at Transy and supported by the new Digital Liberal Arts initiative.

Photo Gallery: The Rafeteria

Allison Spivey
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Photo Gallery: The Rafeteria

Still nervous about your first trip to the Raf-Caf? Rafeteria? Cafeteria in the Raf?

With scary stories circling campus about the never ending lines and lack of forks, it can be hard to work up the courage and patience to embark on your quest to quell your hunger problem. These pictures show the Raf-Caf for what it is, a friendly place with all of the same food from the Caf, just in a new location. While some may dislike the fact that food is no longer a few steps from the dorms, having a place to eat so close to classes (with more food options than the Raf had) is becoming ever-more convenient. Plus, if things seem to crowded during that peak lunch hour, there are additional seating rooms down the hall, which are pictured here.

Not to mention how nice it is to feel no apprehension in spending all your dining dollars at Jazzman’s, instead of saving them for The Raf and late-night Caf.

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To Our Sports Readers

Aaron Bell
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To Our Sports Readers

Dear Rambler Sports readers,

With myself recently being named our new Sports Editor, we feel it would be appropriate to offer some insight as to what direction and overall vision I have for your Sports section.

To put it simply we want to emphasize the human element of sports and offer further knowledge about the game than just game summaries and statistics. Transylvania has its own website dedicated to summarizing the events and providing statistics on our athletic programs. Instead of duplicating the website, we want to explain what happened and offer a few important statistics, but go much more in depth as to what these mean and how they affect the grand scheme of our program.

Along with that, we want to provide more knowledge about the athletes and this semester are looking into providing interviews with coaches and players so we here in the “Transy bubble” will know the athletes as more than just what they do in action.

We also wish to offer more of an unfiltered vibe than you can get from other sites who simply follow games. We will not sacrifice integrity, but I feel there is no issue in bringing attention to a controversial call or questionable situation surrounding the event as long as we have some basis and it has considerable impact on the game.

The sports section will attempt to get at least one story on all of our programs, but will choose to offer more stories based on our readers opinions, popularity of the sport, and current success of the program.

Overall, your section will include a combination of previews, explainers, and in-house knowledge you can only get from students on campus.

As always, your feedback is always appreciated to us at the Rambler sports section.

Aaron Bell

 

 

 

To Our Arts and Culture Readers

Grace Morrison
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To Our Arts and Culture Readers
Hello Rambler readers,
Welcome to the Arts and Culture section! Here you’ll find information about arts-related events happening on campus, reviews, artist profiles, and access to our new digital student gallery. The section should represent the university’s artistic identity, as well as cultivate an awareness of Lexington’s. We hope to create a stronger presence for the arts, particularly student art, by involving more of the Transy community.
Day-to-day coverage will include event write-ups, reviews and critical coverage, and artist profiles. This will provide awareness about the artistic community and promote involvement. The student gallery will be a signature project that represents the work of current Transy students. Anyone can send in a submission, be it poetry, prose, visual art, music, or theatrical. The goal is to create a holistic platform for students to experience art.
Grace Morrison
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Welcome to The Rambler! We’ve been Transylvania University’s only student-run newspaper since 1915, “breaking the bubble” between our small campus and the Lexington community. We aim to create a place for students to be creative and have a voice, hoping to be an outlet for the passions and opinions of the Transy student body. We’re always excited to hear new ideas, so send us a message if you have suggestions, opinions, or want to write an article yourself; there is always room on our staff for new writers and creatives! Thanks for reading The Rambler :) Print’s not dead!

Contact us: rambler@transy.edu

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