Welcome to the week before finals, when everything is shambly and nothing is for certain. We’re hanging on with less than an inch of our sanity. The playlist I have put together for the week reflects our will/drive to power through and stay on the Transy grind. Hopefully it’ll get you pumped up for finals week and ready to finesse all the papers, exams, and projects.
Since this is the Music and Arts Edition, the list of events this week is pretty lengthy but they’re all worth attending!
Art by Moira Hedrick
Don’t forget to come see the TU Choirs and Orchestra concert Friday April 6th at 7:30 PM in Haggin Auditorium presenting Mozart’s Coronation Mass! This concert will feature Transy alumni from choir and professional vocalists as well as instrumentalists alongside current Transy music students. This is one concert you won’t wanna miss! Be there or be square.
Monday April 9th will be the opening of the newest exhibit in Mitchell Fine Arts’ Morlan Gallery, Agnosiophobia: The Fear of Not Knowing which is a Senior Thesis Exhibition by Jessica Chandler, Claire Gardner, Annelisa Hermosilla, Samantha Klintworth and Poppy Liu. Come out and support Transy’s talented art students and appreciate their hard work!
In honor of GSR season, we have another one on April 10th at 12:30 PM in Mitchell Fine Arts’ Carrick Theater. Come support your fellow music students! (PS— I’ll be performing in this GSR so feel free to stop by and say hi).
Art by Moira Hedrick
Another fun music event on campus in the coming week is TU’s Jazz ensembles concert in the Old Morrison Chapel at 7:30 PM! Who doesn’t love some jazz? Be sure to come hear some smooth tunes and as I always say, support your fellow music students! If you don’t know where the chapel is, go up the daunting set of never-ending stairs that sit in front of Old Morrison, walk through the double doors, and you will see the chapel straight ahead. If the doors happen to be locked, try another side door and just go up one of the staircases until you reach the top floor. Walk around until you find the chapel.
An opportunity to expand your musical horizons comes next Wednesday April 11th at 7:30 PM in Mitchell Fine Arts’ Carrick Theater! There will be an event called World Voices Event: George Wakim, Evening of Arabic Music. I couldn’t find much information about this event which makes it that much more intriguing. If you’re looking for something interesting and fun to do, be sure to check out this free event next week.
The last GSR will be next Thursday April 12th at 12:30 PM in Mitchell Fine Arts’ Carrick Theater. If you still haven’t been to one and want to see what it’s all about or (more honestly) need some concert credit, this is your last opportunity!
The final music event of the week is an exciting one next Thursday April 12th at 7:30 PM in Mitchell Fine Arts’ Carrick Theater, with TU’s Opera and Musical Theater Workshop students presenting a show of everything they’ve been working on this semester! It will include some fun costumes and lots of talent so be sure to check it out!
All of these music events are free and open to TU students and the public.
At approximately 12:30, a construction vehicle hit a gas line on West 4th Street, directly in front of Shearer Art Building. Though the gas line was not connected to any surrounding Transy buildings, the Shearer Art Building was evacuated as a precaution for the safety of students and staff. The building was cleared by the local fire department, and no threat has been posed to the Beck Center or the Mitchell Fine Arts building. Classes in Shearer have been canceled for the rest of the day.
Senior Jessica Chandler was in her Studio Art Senior Seminar class when the gas line broke. “We were moving our art from the student gallery to the Morlan Gallery. We weren’t in danger or anything. They redirected us across the street,” said Chandler. “A construction worker said ‘Hey, you guys aren’t smoking, right?’ He just wanted to make sure we didn’t start a fire or something with gas in the air.”
Columbia Gas of Kentucky is currently repairing the gas line. Risa Richardson, a Communications Specialist at Columbia Gas of Kentucky, commented on behalf of the workers on the scene. “We have a damaged line, our crews are repairing there. They had to shut down the corner of North Broadway to North Upper and North Upper to Main [Street],” said Richardson.
Students who have vehicles parked in the area and need to access them are being directed to a common exit towards North Upper Street. The surrounding roads will be closed until the gas line and road is repaired. However, the time until repairs are completed is unknown.
Update: The T-alert enacted earlier has been canceled. The area is clear for students.
Every Monday, the Rambler will release a 20 Questions Video. This series will feature a different staff member each week and we hope will allow the campus community to learn more about and feel more connected with our unique staff. This week’s video features Director of Residence Life Kevin Fisher.
And in that sleep, the world was burning
under golden flare of paper. Ink ran in shimmering tears,
rivulets of past sorrows melting upwards in soft gray smoke,
rising endlessly into star spangled night sky whose
moon watches mournfully through pockmarked skin.
Shiny metal trumps shiny hardbacks because knowledge is the
true threat here don’t you know that?
I heard you call to me from the other side of the ethereal bonfire
and I heard the distant cries of Seuss and Silverstein and Sexton
and the coughing of trees in the distant as their kin burned
to blackened crisp.
I stop somewhere, waiting for you. Or perhaps this time,
I keep walking.
Laura Daley
This piece is part of Under the Gun, a Rambler feature series on gun control & gun culture in the wake of mass shootings and the March for Our Lives. Read the other parts of the series here.
I remember the first time I thought I was going to be shot. I had come to school late that day, so I didn’t hear the announcement over the intercom. I didn’t realize that it was just another one of the seemingly endless drills we always did at the start of the school year. Fire drills, earthquake drills, for some reason tornado drills, and drills for when someone might burst into the classroom and shoot us while we hid in cupboards and closets. I was prepared—for what, I don’t know. I was only thirteen, so a vision of jumping up and tackling the gunman, playing the hero, flashed briefly through my head. I think I knew, though, that all I’d do was huddle under a desk and wait to die.
Most Scouts learn at least the basics of rifle shooting. (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
I remember the first time I shot a gun. I was eight years old, at a Cub Scout camp. We—the kids—got a choice between rowing out onto the lake or learning how to shoot a BB gun. We even got to use an airsoft mask for safety. Naturally, all of us boys immediately decided that we were never going to row crew.
I remember the Scout master making a big deal of holding the rifle correctly as it was the most powerful pellet gun. The kick was apparently very dangerous—if we weren’t careful, the butt of the rifle could pop up and break our nose. But I remember shooting for the first time and how easy it was. Hold the barrel steady, line up the tiny iron sights, exhale, and pull the trigger. I didn’t even have to wait for the satisfying hole in the paper target to appear. I could be really good at this, I thought, in the way that eight-year-olds think they can be good at anything.
None of my friends have ever been shot. I’ve never had to hold someone in my arms as they bled out onto the sidewalk. Nobody has ever pointed a gun at me and squeezed the trigger. I’ve never been rushed to the hospital with a breath mask on my face and a tourniquet holding my leg on as blood spills onto the floor of an ambulance.
People like me, who went to good middle class schools and lived in pleasant enough suburbs and have had ordinary, unremarkable lives—most of our experiences with guns are either through a video game or from something like a Scout camp. We get to be the ones shooting, tallying up our skill and precision and our feelings of power by counting the holes we put in a paper target.
The other side of our experiences is easier for us to push away. It’s pictures on the TV or posts online. Most of the time they don’t even show what the aftermath of a shooting looks like; it gets sanitized. The news shows pictures of sobbing survivors and closed caskets, and it’s easy to think that it’s not a real problem. It’s just the news; it happens to other people.
My grandparents’ generation practiced hiding under their desks in the event of a nuclear war. In my generation, over 150,000 kids have actually been exposed to a school shooting since Columbine. (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
In other ways, though, we’re all under the gun. Young people, my generation, have spent the last twenty years practicing for when someone will burst into their classroom and try to kill them. We’ve seen video after video of police, the so-called good guys with guns, use them to execute innocent black men and women. And children. We know, we’ve known since we could remember, that any one of us could be shot; some of us have practically expected it to happen to one of us, sooner or later.
We pretend that it’s something we can control or fight back against. We maintain for ourselves the illusion that we’re in control of the violence or that it doesn’t really affect us. We play video games where we can customize our light machine guns and kill our friends’ avatars over and over across dozens of digital battlefields. It doesn’t matter; it’s just a game. And we can control it. This game of control, of maintaining the illusion that real life is as consequence-free as a game, is ridiculous when it’s explicit. And yet it saturates our young lives as surely as the real danger of getting shot.
Some of us take the illusion even further. Some of us tell ourselves that the weekend training course in self defense, and the little pistol we carry in our handbag, is enough to protect us. Some of us believe that. Ignore the statistics, the ones that tell you you’re the likeliest to get shot with your own gun. After all, you’re safe, you’re careful. Not like those other people, those stupid people, who got themselves shot. That won’t happen to you.
It probably won’t. Most of us are never going to be shot or even be shot at. But all of us know, deep down, we could be. And we know there’s not a damn thing any of us can do to stop it. Except, maybe, march. Except, maybe, call your Congressman, he’ll listen to you. Except, maybe, if you campaign, and protest, and vote. Maybe if we create some political danger of our own, we can do something about the endless looming danger of the barrel and the bullet. We’ve lived under the gun for long enough.
This piece is part of Under the Gun, a Rambler feature series on gun control & gun culture in the wake of mass shootings and the March for Our Lives. Read the other parts of the series here.
On March 24th, over 850,000 people gathered in front of the U.S capital for the March for Our Lives, a movement against gun violence and for stronger gun laws, making this march the largest march in American history. The March for Our Lives is a movement started by the survivors of the Parkland, Florida shooting that took place at Marjory Stoneman Douglas (MSD) high school on February 14th of this year, claiming the lives of 17 students and faculty. With this being said, there are people out there who have no intention of using their guns, but carry it with them for safety. No one should have to live like this, but if you or someone you know is adamant about this, ensuring you know all there is to know about carrying a gun is something worth looking into. The use of leather holsters shows that you are considerate about the safety of yourself and others around you.
Photo by Kayla Gross
In the past five weeks a group of MSD students, including Emma Gonzalez, David Hogg, Sarah Chadwick, and Cameron Kasky, have been the faces of the March for Our Lives movement by both confronting politicians involved with the NRA (National Rifle Association) and organizing a march on Washington in hopes of influencing politicians to create more restrictions on purchasing firearms in America. Twitter has played a large role in the movement. It started when there seemed to be an apparent pattern in the way politicians respond to school shootings. The hashtag #NeverAgain was what proved to show how monumental this issue really is and how many people were passionate about it.
After MSD senior Emma Gonzalez gave a speech before the #NeverAgain movement started, she ended the speech with the phrase, “We call BS!”, a phrase targeted towards the politicians who fail to discuss taking action against the gun issue. Her speech went viral, and soon after, she made a twitter and gained more followers than the official National Rifle Association page. This encouraged Gonzalez and the rest of the MSD students to start pushing for a larger movement. Twitter and other forms of social media have been used to spread information about events and their beliefs to capture the attention of students across the U.S.
Video from CNN
The March was the kickoff of the #NeverAgain movement; it was incredibly well organized. Security and volunteers handed out water bottles to everyone who attended, and jumbo-trons were placed all the way down Pennsylvania Ave. Protesters heard from 17 different speakers to represent the 17 students who lost their lives in the Parkland shooting.
The crowd of people who attended ranged from young elementary students there with their parents to high school and college students to senior citizens, all fiery and filled with passion and rage about the issue of gun violence.
Photo by Kayla Gross
The crowd appeared as a sea of posters and banners rather than people. Nearly every person had a homemade poster and held it high as they chanted little slogans like, “Vote them out!” referring to the elected officials in office who haven’t showed clear support for gun restrictions; “We call BS!”, in reference to Emma Gonzalez’s very first speech; and “Hey hey ho ho the NRA has got to go!” and “Hey hey NRA how many kids have you killed today!?”, both of which call out the National Rifle Association for contributing to politicians’ campaigns as a means of lobbying against gun control. I interviewed one of the people passing me in the crowd who said they own a business that was a security camera which can detect when a gun is pulled out. They say this helps her safety but still thinks they still need to do more to improve gun laws.
Among these politicians is Florida senator Marco Rubio, who has been accepting money from the National Rifle Association lobbyists and in return has discussed a few ways to prevent school shootings through “Red Flag Laws” and the “Try and Lie” bill. Rubio has yet to present anything that involves stricter gun laws or anything related to guns for that matter.
Photo by Kayla Gross
A few weeks prior the the March for Our Lives, CNN hosted a Town Hall with NRA spokeswoman Dana Leosch, Florida senator Marco Rubio, and a few of the faces of the #NeverAgain movement. Cameron Kasky, an MSD student asked Rubio if he’d ever stop taking donations from the NRA. Rubio responded with, “people buy into my agenda.”
Since Columbine there have been an estimated208 fatal school shootings in the U.S., yet nothing has been done to prevent this issue. It has been recently uncovered that the National Rifle Association lobbyists have been paying off politicians, and in return the politicians don’t pass any laws that prevent people from purchasing firearms. In 2016 Donald Trump received$30 million from the NRA for his presidential campaign, and in response he has shown his full support and respect for the second amendment and the NRA when they say that we need to arm teachers with firearms and get rid of gun-free zones. I doubt that many teachers actually want to be armed with a potentially fatal weapon. Instead, I imagine they are looking for other ways to protect themselves, like bulletproof partition shields from Versare. Regardless, I am certain they are all hoping for gun reform.
At the March, Sarah Chadwick, another student of MSD, walked onstage with a little orange price tag with $1.05 on it. “When you take 3,140,167 – the number of students enrolled in Florida schools – and divide by $3,303,355 – the amount of money Marco Rubio has received from the National Rifle Association, it comes out to a dollar and five cents. Is that all we’re worth to these politicians? A dollar and five cents? Was $17.85 all it cost you that day, Mr. Rubio? Well I say, one life is worth more than all the guns in America.”
Video from NBC News
The March was not organized only as a response to the Parkland shooting, however. The MSD student organizers worked with a broad group of gun control activists and victims of gun violence. “We recognize that Parkland received more attention because of its affluence,” Jaclyn Corin, a survivor of the Parkland shooting, said during her speech. “But we share this stage today and forever with those communities who have always stared down the barrel of a gun.”
One of the other speakers was Naomi Wadler, an 11-year-old who organized a walkout for her elementary school. “I am here to acknowledge and represent the African-American girls whose stories don’t make the front page of every national newspaper, whose stories don’t lead on the evening news” said Wadler, and she was the first of many to present an intersectional approach to gun violence.
Photo by Kayla Gross
North Lawndale Prep students and members of student-led non-violence organization the Peace Warriors in Chicago, Alex King and D’Angelo McDade, walked up onstage with colored tape over their mouths and addressed the crowd as their family. “I said family because we are here to join together in unity fighting for the same goals,” McDade explained. “I say family because of all the pain that I see in the crowd. And that pain is another reason why we are here. Our pain makes us family. Us hurting together brings us closer together to fight for something better.”
“Martin Luther King Jr once said that darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that, and hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that, which now leads me to say violence cannot drive out violence, only peace can do that; poverty cannot drive out poverty, only resources can do that; death cannot drive out death, only pro-active life can do that,” said McDade.
Video from NBC News
This piece is part of Under the Gun, a Rambler feature series on gun control & gun culture in the wake of mass shootings and the March for Our Lives. Read the other parts of the series here.
Last April, I was present during an attack on Transylvania’s campus. While I have mostly recovered from the trauma inflicted on me and the campus community eleven months ago (thanks to counselors, incredible friends, and the gift of time), I don’t often share publicly about my experience. It’s uncomfortable; it upsets me; and it often falls upon the ears of those who are unprepared to support me. Today, I am choosing to break that silence in solidarity with students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and their counterparts all over the country who have witnessed unimaginable violence in their schools. The fact is, not a day goes by that I don’t think about the horrific scene I witnessed last spring. On days that the news is filled with stories of survivors of violence (and of those who were not so lucky) on other schools’ campuses, I feel this trauma in new ways.
When I hear of children being gunned down in their schools, chills rush over my body as my mind transports me back to Jazzman’s Café on the morning of April 28th. I situate myself with my blueberry muffin and banana in a booth with some classmates who are working with me on a group project. When I see the door open to my right, I glance up, hoping to see a familiar face. The face that looks back at me beneath an American flag bandana is that of Mitchell Adkins, a familiar face, indeed. It takes all of three seconds for my mind to register that the fact that Mitchell (who had left Transy the year before) is carrying a duffel bag means bad news for all fifty people in the coffee shop that day. My mind running a mile a minute, I glance up at him as I try to covertly dial 911 on my cell phone. Then, as he begins to loudly demand everyone’s attention, he reaches into his duffel bag and pulls out a hatchet and a machete. Though I know I must still escape this situation, a peculiar sense of relief washes over me.
Almost a year later, this sense of relief disturbs me. I recognize it now for its alarming reality: in the midst of my terror, I was relieved that the man threatening me and my classmates was ONLY brandishing massive blades instead of the assault rifle I had come to expect. In a split second, my brain instinctively calculated the possible carnage this man and his weapons were capable of and told me that I would probably be safe. Thankfully, my instincts were right, and I survived with only psychological scarring.
However, as many people chose to point out to me in the aftermath, if Mitchell had been carrying an assault rifle that morning like I thought he was, I would most likely be gone. In recent weeks, I have caught myself wondering why in the hell he wasn’t carrying an assault rifle. Absolutely nothing (aside from, perhaps, finances) was preventing this 19-year-old, notoriously aggressive political extremist from stopping off and buying an AR-15 on his way to campus that morning. Nothing but the grace of God, or luck, or random chance stands between me and the victims of countless school shootings across the US. This fact keeps me awake at night.
Last weekend, I chose to take part in the March for Our Lives to advocate for stricter gun control laws to make it more difficult for criminals who intend to launch an attack (like the one that has deeply affected my life, and the lives of many in this community) to attain deadly assault rifles. In no way do I support a government entity coming to take anyone’s hunting rifles away, but I do believe that common sense gun laws are a non-partisan issue. I must commend the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School for so quickly turning their trauma into action. May the rest of us follow their lead. Enough is enough.
This piece is part of Under the Gun, a Rambler feature series on gun control & gun culture in the wake of mass shootings and the March for Our Lives. Read the other parts of the series here.
Under the Gunis a Rambler feature series on gun violence, gun control, and gun culture in the wake of mass shootings and the March for Our Lives.
Reporter Kayla Gross went to the March for Our Lives in Washington, DC. Read about it here.
Senior Rachel Young remembers feeling relieved when she realized an attacker on campus wasn’t armed with a gun. Read it here.
Commentary Editor Isaac Batts processes gun control through a poetic lens. Read their work here.
Editor-in-Chief Tristan Reynolds reflects on the way guns and violence have intersected with his own life, and the national consciousness. Read about it here.
Senior Laura Daley reflects on violence and control in a new poem. Read it here.
Another day
Another headline
Another body count
And I can’t keep track anymore.
Too many people
Too many lives
Have been wrenched away
Beaten
Crushed
Stolen
And yet we do nothing
We beg
And plead
And yell
And cry
And still we are ignored
Because the dollars lining
The pockets of Congress
Mean more than
The breath in our lungs
This piece is part of Under the Gun, a Rambler feature series on gun control & gun culture in the wake of mass shootings and the March for Our Lives. Read the other parts of the series here.
While it’s been rainy outside and school has become end-of-the-semester insane, the good news is that we’ve all survived another stressful week. Hopefully this chill playlist of brand new releases from all different genres will get ya through the weekend.
Happy Easter and Passover to anyone who celebrates! Fun fact just in case you all weren’t aware, but this year Easter falls on the same date as April Fool’s day. Could this mean that people might hide eggs without candy in them just to say “Happy April Fools”? Will it really be Easter or is the date all a joke? Stay tuned to find out.
As for Arts Events of the Week…
Art by Moira Hedrick
It’s officially General Student Recital season! The first one will be held in Mitchell Fine Arts’ Carrick Theater on Tuesday, April 3rd at 12:30p.m.
That same evening at 7:30, the Transylvania University Concert Band will be performing in Mitchell Fine Arts’ Haggin Auditorium!
The second General Student Recital will be at 7:30p.m. in Carrick Theater on Thursday, April 5th.
Please go support your talented friends and fellow students!!
