ON THE
RECORD spring/summer 2017
volume 2 // issue 2
pg. 14 // CTRL-A S L R U C R L U T O Y D E ELETE pg. 19 C A R B pg. 34 // 502 BSU T L EM U A S pg. 39 AS L 46 // POE . A g p U E TIC JUSTIC X E S K L A T S ’ T LE
MY SCHOOL ,
YOUR
RULES
pg. 24
GET READY
TO TAKE
FLIGHT.
Schedule your campus visit to learn more about joining the Cardinal Family. uofl.me/campus-hs-visit
2
ON THE RECORD v2//i2
STAFF EDITORS-IN-CHIEF HARPER CARLTON & SAM WEIBLE CREATIVE DIRECTOR WILL LAKE MANAGING EDITOR SYLVIA GOODMAN COPY EDITOR ALICE DETERS
FROM THE EDITORS
DESIGN EDITOR ELLA MAYS DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS EMILY CIEMINSKI
DEAR READERS, Being the leaders of a student-run publication is not easiest job we’ve ever had. On top of being editors, we have to study for our AP classes, maintain our friendships, and balance our other extracurriculars, all while we’re managing a staff of 30, trying to push out a professional-quality publication. Sending this issue to print has proven to be particularly difficult for us. We’ve pushed back our original send-to-print date several times in order to make the magazine the best it could be. This issue, we chose story topics that we knew would challenge us – we just didn’t know how much. Some of the stories we chose kept changing and the text had to be constantly updated, like those about sexual assault, the so-called “alt-right,” and the state of Kentucky’s schools. So while getting out this issue, our staff has faced struggles and setbacks, but we’re not the only ones. Our school system, Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS), faced a turbulent
PHOTO EDITOR JORDYN STUMPF
Kentucky legislative session this year. Bills introduced in the General Assembly sought to dismantle the current student assignment plan and add in charter schools. Additionally, the only superintendent that most of our staff can remember recently announced her plans to step down. Big changes are happening all around us. After four years as high school journalists, we’re going off to colleges in Illinois and Texas, states far from the comfort of the Louisville community in which we’ve grown up. It’s bittersweet to see all of our efforts culminate in this last issue, all of the hours we’ve put in outside of school – over 20 hours in just the last week – but we know the magazine is in good hands. We hope you enjoy reading this issue, and stay tuned for the great work that will come next school year.
STAY FROSTY,
SAM & HARPER
MULTIMEDIA EDITOR NYAH MATTISON LEAD WRITERS ZAKEYA BAKER, CAMERON DANIEL, JORDAN GOULD, KIM LE, KARAC MEDLEY, MELISSA SCIANIMANICO WRITERS LUCY CALDERON, AUDREY CHAMPELLI, ALEX COX, KAELYN HARRIS, WESLEY LYNCH, MATTIE TOWNSON, NICOLE WHITE PHOTO COORDINATOR SARAH SCHMIDT PHOTOGRAPHERS MALLORY SIEGENTHALER, KELSEY WUNDERLUCH LEAD DESIGNER MADDY WILLIAMS DESIGNER OLIVIA BROTZGE ART DIRECTOR DILLON PINHOLSTER MULTIMEDIA TEAM JEDIAH HOLMAN AD TEAM MEGHAN JEWELL, MAYA MALAWI, MAGGIE STINNETT ADVISER LIZ PALMER
ON THE RECORD is a magazine by and for the youth of Louisville. In 2015, we transitioned from being duPont Manual High School’s tabloid-size school newspaper, the Crimson Record, to a magazine with a city-wide audience and local distribution. Utilizing our training as writers, photographers, and designers, we aim for On the Record to fill the void of youth perspective in local journalism. ON THE RECORD is published by the students of the Journalism & Communication Magnet at duPont Manual High School, 120 W. Lee St., Louisville, KY 40208. Visit us at ontherecordmag.com COVER MODEL: Edie Bell // photo by OLIVIA BROTZGE v2//i2 ON THE RECORD
3
14 46 30 39
24
4
ON THE RECORD v2//i2
34
SPRING 2017
CONTENTS 6
Louisville in a Day
8
Slice of the City
9
Goodwill Hunting
10 12
Places to check out in this issue’s featured neighborhood, Old Louisville.
A closer look at one of Louisville’s little-known landmarks.
If you’re short on cash, thrift shopping can help. Assemble a perfect outfit for less than $20.
Out of the Ordinary Two high school siblings dedicate their lives to pair skating.
Up & Coming The sophomores behind Trash Colony are defining success on their terms.
14
This Hair is Mine
18
Spring Reviews
Louisville teens embrace the beauty of natural hair.
Take a look at the books and music we love this season.
19
The Young and the Fascist “Alt-right” groups and their leaders are replacing dank memes with hate memes.
24
You’re Testing My Limits
30
The Fruits of Labor
34
Break Your Silence
39
Black, Strong, United
42
It’s Only FAIR
46
Behind the Mic
Get up to speed on some of the recent discussions surrounding JCPS: neighborhood schools, charters, and new leadership.
Local teenage moms and moms-to-be find refuge in the Louisville Teenage Parent Program schools.
Sexual assault is an issue that’s brushed off by people even at the highest levels.
Black Student Unions organize a powerful city-wide group.
How a group of ‘60s Louisville teens spoke out against injustice.
Youth discover the excitement of poetry through Young Poets of Louisville.
v2//i2 ON THE RECORD
5
LOUISVILLE
IN A DAY
CHECK OUT OLD LOUISVILLE words by MAYA MALAWI & MAGGIE STINNETT // design by MADDY WILLIAMS photos by MALLORY SIEGENTHALER & KELSEY WUNDERLICH
→ A public park in Old Louisville with walking paths, tennis courts, and picnic tables. Start out your day by taking a walk through Central Park, enjoying the scenery and admiring the nature.
DIZZY WHIZZ DRIVE IN 217 St. Catherine Street Louisville, KY 40203
FIRST ST
BROOK ST
1340 S Fourth Street Louisville, KY 40208
SECOND ST
CENTRAL PARK
THIRD ST
ST. CATHERINE ST FOURTH ST
→ Old Louisville is an area with a wealth of culture and activities. Here’s our recommendation for what you can do in a day in this neighborhood.
65
OAK ST
PARK AVE
MAGNOLIA AVE
HILL ST
CARDINAL BLVD
→ Family-owned restaurant with signature burgers and curbside service. We recommend lunch at Dizzy Whizz Drive-In.We ate their signature Whizzburger, which has been served there for over 50 years. It was delicious!
6
ON THE RECORD v2//i2
SPEED ART MUSEUM
PIZZA DONISI
2035 S. Third Street Louisville, KY 40208
1396 S. Second Street Louisville, KY 40208
→ An innovative art museum on the University of Louisville campus that hosts new exhibits throughout the year. Check out the Speed Art Museum, which was just renovated last year. The exhibits are constantly changing so there is something new and beautiful to look at every time.
→ A small downtown pizzeria with pizza by the slice and a weekly Chef ’s Choice. We recommend Pizza Donisi for dinner. They offer a new Chef ’s Speciality Pizza every week so make sure to check it out. We definitely recommend Donisi’s Three Cheese Wontons – they were fantastic!
RECORD ON THE
BY AND FOR THE YOUTH OF LOUISVILLE
$15 ON THE RECORD SUBSCRIPTION ONE YEAR’S WORTH OF ISSUES (3 ISSUES)
NEW WEBSITE ADS
$45 WEBSITE BANNER AD PER MONTH
970 px by 90 px
$30 WEBSITE SIDE AD PER MONTH
468 px by 60 px
$25 WEBSITE HALF BANNER AD PER MONTH
125 px by 125 px
& MORE! FOR MORE INFORMATION
ontherecord@manualjc.com ontherecordmag.com
OR VISIT
v2//i2 ON THE RECORD
7
SLICE OF
THE CITY
THE LITTLE LOOMHOUSE words by ALEX COX & KAELYN HARRIS // design by SAM WEIBLE
Louisville is full of unique places that catch our eye, yet their purposes may remain a mystery. To that end, here’s a little mystery we’d like to reveal. → East of Iroquois Park on Kenwood Hill Road sits a collection of cabins known as the Little Loomhouse. People of all ages interested in knitting, spinning, and, of course, looming are invited to participate in their activities and events. Originally built in the 1860s, the cabins can be hard to find, but now they’re no more than a Google search away. The Loomhouse has a unique past worth sharing, as history has been made there. Most notably, the words to “Happy Birthday to You” were first sung by the Hill sisters in the Esta Cabin, the main building. After the cabins had expanded from one to three, the property passed to Lou Tate, a nationally recognized master weaver who had grown up in Louisville, attending the Louisville Girls High School (which would later become duPont Manual High School) and the University of Louisville, among other institutions. Eleanor Roosevelt herself commissioned pieces from Tate. Tate sought to make weaving more accessible and less time consuming. She set up her workshop in the cabins, creating a cultural art hub for local artists, musicians, writers, and weavers. In the 1960s, artists hung their creations in the trees as musicians played from the cabin rooftops. Though the Little Loomhouse no longer hosts these shows, they feature local artists and create a monthly exhibit about a significant historical event. Along with afternoon classes, youth can attend summer camps that run alongside regular adult classes. To get involved, visit littleloomhouse.org. • 8
ON THE RECORD v2//i2
WEAVED TOGETHER (top): The table loom, created by Lou Tate and dentist Dr. S. W. Mather, is able to accommodate for children because of its smaller size. LOOMINESCENT (bottom-left): The original loom used by Lou Tate sits in the Esta Cabin in the small museum complete with the original fireplace built in the 1800’s. TOPHOUSE WORKSHOP (bottom-right): the downstairs workshop is where all of the weaving and knitting classes take place for ages six and up. // photos by SARAH SCHMIDT
MODEL: Skye Spalding, 18, duPont Manual High School // photo by SEYDA MURATOVA
GOODWILL
HUNTING
FALL INTO SUMMER words by CAMERON DANIEL // design by SAM WEIBLE
Shopping on a budget? We can help. From street style to high fashion, the “thrifted” look has become a major trend, but we know that the extensive variety and unorganized nature of a thrift store can cause some to turn and run. That’s why we spent a day in America’s most iconic thrift store: Goodwill, obviously.
JACKET: $5.49 TOP: $4.49 SKIRT: $4.49
→ The massive variety paired with minimal prices makes thrift shopping an appealing option for teenagers. There’s nothing we love more than finding the perfect piece for an affordable price – but the variety of styles in a thrift store can be daunting for some. So we decided to dedicate a few hours to searching every corner of our local Goodwill on Westport Road. What we came out with: the perfect cute and functional outfit for less than $20.00. There’s no need to fear the sometimes-intimidating aisles of your local thrift store. All you need is dedication, patience, and perseverance! While this outfit obviously embodies fall with flouncy layers and burnt orange tones, we chose these pieces for our spring issue because of their versatility. Drop the jacket and you have a casual, light outfit for a brunch date; drop the skirt and add some pants for the perfect work ensemble. This simply goes to show that you can achieve beautiful and well put-together outfits without breaking the bank at a department store, but with just a few dollars and some inspiration. Believe it or not, this entire outfit cost less than $20. A similar ensemble at a chain store would probably be closer to $100. •
v2//i2 ON THE RECORD
9
OUT OF THE
ORDINARY
GO FIGURE
Two high school siblings ice skate their way to national placement. words by WESLEY LYNCH & MATTIE TOWNSON // design by OLIVIA BROTZGE GO FIGURE... SKATE!: Siblings Luke (12) and Claire Purnell (11) practice their routine at Iceland Sports Complex on Jan. 7. “Sometimes I wonder, ‘Should I quit and have a normal life? Should I be a teenager and try something else?’ but skating is all I’ve ever done since I was three, so I don’t know any other life,” said Claire. “It just pushes me to work even harder.” // photo by KELSEY WUNDERLICH
→ Spotlights followed the pair of skaters as they flitted around the rink, leaving little space untouched by their sharp blades. Sixteen-year-old Claire Purnell stood in the far corner of the rink patiently waiting her turn with her 18-year-old brother, Luke. As applause followed the prior performance, the siblings skated to the center of the rink and struck their beginning pose. Their heads turned toward each other, and their bodies tensed. Music. They began reflecting each other’s movements, sliding their legs forward and backward in unison. As they made a sharp turn, the blade of Luke’s skate smashed into Claire’s skate, entangling the pair’s laces and boots. Claire gripped Luke’s shoulders while simultaneously attempting to yank his blade from her boot. They didn’t fall, but the little
10
ON THE RECORD v2//i2
mistake cost the pair points from their score. Though they had been training for years, they knew they needed more practice. Claire, the director’s daughter at the Louisville Skating Academy, grew up on the ice with her brother. When she was young, Claire spent time playing with the snow on the rink while she watched the skaters. As she grew older, she started paying more attention to the practices, mirroring the older skaters’ movements. Claire skated solo from ages 8 to 10, but at 11 she discovered ice dance, which fuses ballroom dancing, acting, and figure skating in a two-person routine. She partnered with her brother, then 13, who was also skating solo at the time. “I wasn’t very good, but I just liked to perform,” Claire said. “Everyone always
told me that I had a beautiful smile, which means my skating was crap. But I could at least smile.” They realized that they would need to put in more work than they initially thought to improve, so they started to dedicate themselves to daily practice and conditioning. They faced many obstacles, like Claire being the taller of the two. When learning more complex movements, Claire lifted Luke, making them different from their competition. “At first I was embarrassed,” Luke said. “But after a few competitions I started to really own it and be proud of my sister’s ability to be so strong.” Claire and Luke’s mutual support of each other has made it easier for them to work together as a pair. They attended
the same school for their entire lives until Claire’s ice skating and school schedules became too rigorous. Following her sophomore year at Kentucky Country Day (KCD), Claire decided that online schooling would conserve her time and give her more opportunities to skate. Luke, on the other hand, attends KCD and finds that the commitment to be in school for at least seven hours a day is more beneficial for his learning style, compared to flexible online classes. He finds that he learns better under the stricter learning environment with more supervision, while Claire finds that she can pace her workload more efficiently at home. However, he is often forced to stay awake until late hours of the night while trying to juggle his homework and 16 hours of skating per week. Claire and Luke spend the majority of their practice time either skating or training to skate. Their training usually consists of ballet classes and traditional conditioning. Sometimes Claire and Luke go to Iceland Sports Complex twice a day – once in the morning and once at night. Despite their contrasting schedules, they have found a way to work in the necessary amount of practice time. Although the duo is currently second in the midwest region representing the Louisville Skating Academy, their winnings have not always come easily. “We lost all the time,” Claire said, “but we didn’t stop because we knew it was what we loved.” Now, Luke has grown taller than Claire, and they’re proud of sticking to the activity and not giving up because of the difficulties they faced. “I always root for the underdog, because that’s kind of like how we were,” Claire said. Though the siblings have had difficulty improving their scores, they have high ambitions for themselves and their future. “We hope in the near future to be on Team USA. We also hope to make it to the Olympics someday but that’s obviously one in a million,” Claire said.
“ Everyone always told me that I had a beautiful smile, which means my skating was crap. But I could at least smile. ” - Claire Purnell (16)
After high school, they plan on going to college near each other and continue skating in ice dance as a pair. “I want to skate until I no longer enjoy it,” Claire said. Back at the rink, Claire and Luke made their entrance and quickly skated to the center. As the music began, Claire and Luke started their routine with a spin. In preparation for a sharp turn, the pair swayed to keep the skating elegant and clean. As they came to their finale, they performed one last sharp turn that left bold
skid marks tracing their path on the ice, jolted to a stop and took a bow. When they reached the wings of the rink, their coach stood waiting to compliment them and give them quick critiques. As the two received their scores, Luke’s grasp on Claire’s hand tightened, and Claire’s smile widened. The pair went from struggling to balance on the ice to achieving the title of the 11th best ice dance duo in the region, proving to themselves that their countless blisters, falls, and early morning alarms paid off. •
SKATE MATE: Luke Purnell (12) and Claire Purnell (11) skate at Iceland Sports Complex on Jan. 7. They share the same goal. “We hope in the near future, 2 or 3 years, to be on Team USA,” said Claire Purnell. // photo by KELSEY WUNDERLICH
v2//i2 ON THE RECORD
11
UP &
COMING
THAT’S A RAP
Five high school rappers take a new approach to classic hip-hop. words by OLIVIA BROTZGE & MATTIE TOWNSON // design by OLIVIA BROTZGE
HOUSE PARTY: Members of Trash Colony, going by the stage names Vincent Verrgo, Winston Griim, Yung Melee, Queer Maggot, and NiMRoD perform at a house show on Feb. 11. “We actually weren’t able to perform at the venue we were supposed to, but it all worked out in the end because we just ended up back at my place and did a house show for about 30 of our friends,” said Winston Griim. // photo by OLIVIA BROTZGE
→ The last couple of decades have seen a major shift in the accessibility of the music industry, and for young artists, this means that they must try harder to get the public’s attention. By tracking artists’ social media following and online hits, Next Big Sound, a music analytics website and Pandora affiliate, determined that 91% of all artists remain undiscovered. With the larger pool of potential artists flooding social media and Soundcloud, those who offer new qualities are more likely to be rewarded. Trash Colony, a local hip-hop group comprised of five local high school sophomores, found an approach that resonated with teens, and it landed them their first show on Dec. 23. On that day, dressed in a velvet blazer topped off with an Egyptian pharaoh headdress, “Winston Griim,” the alter ego of Mateo Sollano (16) from duPont Manual High School, only needed one more element to complete 12
ON THE RECORD v2//i2
his performance ensemble. He reached towards the backseat of his mother’s SUV, where the final touch laid, the skeleton mask that separated his everyday life from his hip-hop career and kept his identity hidden. As Griim got closer to the venue, he started to pick at his already short nails and frantically chip away at the leftover performance makeup caking his palms. “You all right, Griim?” said “Vincent Verrgo,” the character of Manual sophomore Alex Amaya (16), dressed in a hoodie with his mask already on. His mask covered his entire face, detailed with a simple asymmetrical “V.” Sollano responded with a large toothy grin and a wicked cackle. The Griim persona was starting to shine through. The members of Trash Colony wanted to take a theatrical approach to differentiate their performances from other rappers in the local hip-hop scene. Each member has a character and a name. Verrgo was inspired from the
double “V” names in Quentin Tarantino movies and Griim from his favorite character in Ghostbusters. Queer Maggot, the character of Manual sophomore Silas Elmore (16), explained the “reclaiming” behind his name: “I realized that right off the bat, my sexuality was gonna get used against me in some way, so I decided that the easiest way to take control of that was to put it in my name.” Trash Colony consists of five sophomores including Winston Griim, Vincent Verrgo, Queer Maggot, and Manual sophomore Henry HarboltBosco (15), who goes by NiMRoD. Carter Hofer (16), an Eastern High School sophomore who goes by Yung Melee, is also in the group. The members conceived Trash Colony in Jan. 2016 and in early October the band released music on Soundcloud. One of their first singles, NiMRoD’s “Crumbs,” gained over 680 plays in a single month.
As Verrgo and Griim approached downtown Spinelli’s, they grew more and more anxious since the audience at past Trash Colony shows had mainly been close friends. The group began with a few supplies– a computer, a mic, and some basic audio editing software. After each group member saved up their money, they were able to add better quality equipment to have a semi-professional studio in the basement of Griim’s house, complete with a soundproof “booth” originally made from a closet. The recording studio cost around $2000, and they are earning this money back with the profit from their shows and merchandise. Using their new equipment, Trash Colony was able to release their first track made by NiMRoD, titled “My Mom Doesn’t Like my Raps” on Oct. 2. That same month, each individual rapper in the group released tracks of their own, showcasing their different styles and lyrical focuses. “Trash Colony became a thing more on the spot than anything else,” Verrgo said. “We have a lot of people around us that enjoy the same thing and enjoy the same music. It was a matter of trying to come together and create something.” Though he was excited about the show, Grimm consistently thought of his first time rapping in front of an audience. After he performed his first single, “Cherry Popper,” he left the house and ran to the backyard. Outside, he fell to his hands and knees and threw up from nerves and pure adrenaline. All he wanted was to avoid a repeat of that situation. When all of the group arrived at the venue, Griim sat at a table swarmed by the incoming crowd, and marked everyone’s hands with Spinelli’s standard black “X” in exchange for the $8 entry fee. Verrgo sat in a booth trying to calm his nerves with other performers playing that night. Queer Maggot stood against the wall, silently rehearsing the rhymes in his head. NiMRoD circulated from table to table, visiting each friend and shouting for no reason. Yung Melee spent his time making new friends and telling joke after joke while keeping a straight face. After four performances from other local acts – Shadowpact, Dillon McCluskey, Marty Bars, and The Happy Yew, the members of Trash Colony slowly
stepped up to the front area of Spinelli’s, lugging turntables and mics in front of an impatient crowd. Winston Griim and Vincent Verrgo, swayed back and forth with their hands clenched together below their stomachs and waited for the other four artists in Trash Colony to finish preparing the set. Griim’s chin raised to the ceiling, revealing skin under his mask. Queer Maggot prepared himself by standing alone, still silently reciting his lyrics. NiMRoD closed his eyes and shook to the beats while sporadically throwing his arms towards the crowd.
“ It was just a matter of trying to come together and create something. ” - Vincent Verrgo (16)
Their nervousness and personalities were evident despite their masks as they fumbled placing their five microphones, trying not to mess up in front of a paying audience. From behind the crowd, the loud voice of the show director, AMC, shouted, “Let’s keep it professional here,” signalling to them that they needed to speed up the process. After about four minutes of setup, Trash Colony was finally ready to showcase performance skills that they had worked for months to perfect. Vincent Verrgo was the first on the setlist. As his voice boomed through the microphone, the members of the crowd lifted their hands and moved them up and down with the beat that blasted through the many speakers in the front corners of the room. Next up was NiMRoD, then Queer Maggot, then Yung Melee, and finally,
members of the group collaborated on tracks together. With each song, the large crowd got more and more into the music. Some lost themselves in the intensity of the vocals, and some just stood quietly beside the mosh pit, listening to the melodies inspired by some of the group’s favorite artists, including MF Doom and Aesop Rock. By being there, many came out of their comfort zone by experiencing an alternative twist on classic hip-hop in an environment that was completely alien to them. Sometimes, the band heard of others questioning their legitimacy because of their young age. However, they continue to collect the sketches, paintings, and scribbles offered to them by a growing teenage fanbase. These works of art adorn their studio walls, sparking their inspiration when they enter the room. To be successful in the competitive music industry, one must have his/ her own unique characteristic to help stand out from the rest of the crowd. The members of Trash Colony have learned this since they first began, understanding that their success is because they’re different. “I definitely think the blending of perspectives and the different styles and takes that we take on the hip-hop genre is what makes us unique. What we do very well in the group is that we encompass a lot of different styles and art forms,” Griim said. At the end of the show, after the many farewells from the group, Verrgo and Griim piled into the backseat of a car and drove home in complete silence. The only sounds were the muffled radio host voices and the late-night, downtown road chaos. Griim looked out the window, replaying the show in his head from start to finish. He remembered his first time coming on stage and remembered the audience’s reaction. He attempted to relive what it felt like to not be the only one feeling the music. “It was so surreal because we put in all this time and to see it pay off was just so rewarding,” Verrgo said, after the show. “It was a weird feeling, but it sort of solidified the group for everybody and solidified that we want to take it further.” • Trash Colony can be heard at soundcloud.com/trashcolony
v2//i2 ON THE RECORD
13
R I A H THIS IS
14
E N MI
ON THE RECORD v2//i2
More than just a hairstyle, natural hair is a statement that can’t be ignored. words by ZAKEYA BAKER & JEDIAH HOLMAN design by SAM WEIBLE
photos by JORDYN STUMPF
→ At the start of the 2016-17 school year, attention centered around Butler Traditional High School’s new hair policy and the hairstyles it targeted. The policy stated, “Hairstyles that are extreme, distracting, or attentiongetting will not be permitted. No dreadlocks, cornrolls (sic), twists, mohawks, and no jewelry will be worn in hair.” A group of students and parents said that the policy targeted natural African-American hairstyles and culture; however, Butler’s administration and their site-based decision-making council (SBDM) assured students that the policy was not meant to target black hairstyles or offend black students. Within the same week, the policy was removed, yet discussions about natural hair in school and workplaces remain. The term “natural hair” refers to Afro-textured hair that has no chemical straightening alterations changing the natural curl pattern, including relaxers or texturizers used to remove the curl pattern over a period of time and make it straight – excluding flat-ironed hair. In the past decade, many black women have begun to transition to natural hair. This process can take from months to years. Natural styles include twist outs, bantu knots, Afros, and many protective styles: low-maintenance hairstyles that protect the hair from product use and cut down on time spent doing hair. Box braids, Senegalese twists, and several other variations would be considered protective styles. •
“
Diamond Wade
I went natural around seventh grade because my sister went off to college, and she was my hairdresser. Before she went off to college, she hadn’t taught me how to take care of my hair. I had watched her, but that was it. I learned how to do my own hair, and it wasn’t intentional, but I started transitioning. I just knew I couldn’t flat iron my hair as much. My hair changed a lot over the years. And it’s not just looks. Once you go natural, you’re basically forced to deal with your hair, yourself, and how God made you ... it makes you appreciate who you are naturally. And I’ve learned to accept my hair. I’m in Manual’s Visual Arts magnet, and a lot of the stuff we do is composition-based, so if you do a subject or self portrait, the most convenient person you have is yourself. If my hair doesn’t feel right, I can’t do that whole piece. To be honest, I’m still trying to figure out the message in my art; it would say, for one, it’s okay to have natural hair, and two, that natural hair is beautiful. That can be depicted either through my brush strokes or the person in my piece having natural hair. v2//i2 ON THE RECORD
15
Zakeya Baker
On the Record Lead Writer
→ Every piece of hair was either dry, uneven, or confused. Watching countless strands fall to the floor, I squirmed in the salon chair, feeling on edge while waiting to see my new hair. To bystanders this was just a small trim, but to me this was a big chop and a punch to my ego. After months of struggling to detangle my hair, the comb glided straight through after my stylist cut off the dead ends. I felt relieved in one way and unready in another. When the chair spun around to the mirror and I set eyes on my hair, I regretted stepping foot into the salon, but I had known it was time for a change. Some may say that the haircut I got that day was nothing compared to what others have gotten, but they don’t understand how much my hair “defined” me. For most of my life, all I knew was that long, flat-ironed hair was beautiful, not short afros or curly puffs. I was always complimented on how my hair was long and looked like “Indian hair.” I always loved my hair even if I hated everything else, so once I made the decision to cut off those few inches and go natural, it was a HUGE change. The first day I experimented with a natural hairstyle was my last day of freshman year. I wore a two-strand twist out with a black headband. I remember the the only thing that was on my mind was what everyone would think of me. I thought other students would laugh at my hair or, worse, not say anything. But to my surprise, they actually liked it. I walked into class that morning and faces slowly turned towards me, and smiles started to grow. “Oh my gosh, Zakeya, your hair is so cute!” was repeated over to me from all directions. From that day forward, I knew I would like this lifestyle. For three years in my life, I wasn’t natural, and some days I regret ever getting a texturizer because the process of transitioning to natural hair was tough and took me two years to fully become natural. Despite the broken hair ties and empty bottles of curling cream, I grew to love its perfections and imperfections. I no longer see it as being what makes me, but rather being a bonus layer to me. • 16
ON THE RECORD v2//i2
“
Kailei Caggins
I transitioned about a year and a half ago and was really eager to cut off my hair, so I did the big chop one day in March 2016 before school. I just figured out straight hair wasn’t really for me even though it’s the norm and preferred. It’s taken a while, but I finally realized that I can be me. I feel like I’m meant to be natural. But it’s hard, knowing that it’s not as accepted and pushed down, like ‘you need to straighten your hair, we don’t need to see this, or it’s wild.’ But I love it, and I’ll do it for the rest of my life.
Jediah Holman
On the Record Multimedia Team
ALI Shackelford
“
In fifth grade, my mom put the idea of going natural in my head, and I said no because I didn’t want to cut off all my hair and be bald. So, she went natural, and showed me what it was like. I liked that her hair was really different: curly and kinky. That was one of the things that made me go natural. After I cut my hair, it took me from 15 minutes to do my hair to five, tops. When my hair was permed, I would have to do something with it, but now I can just get up and go. It costs no time at all, and, in fact, it gives me more time back and I just appreciate it. I feel like I am one of those people who will truly keep their hair like this. It’s something new, and I like it.
→ I stood in front of my bathroom mirror. My eyes opened and closed as I fought my drowsiness. I glanced over the mountainous bear trap on the top of my head and reminded myself not to stress. I grabbed a hair tie from my dresser and put the hair in a ponytail. My eyebrows scrunched together while I waited for my ragdoll ponytail to turn into the picture-perfect one I wanted. I tried to redo it over and over again, but to no avail. It seemed like the five-minute ponytail turned into 10, then 20, and then 30. This was going to be a lot harder than I thought. The first day of freshman year was finally the day my mom let me do my hair on my own, and I was thrilled. I thought I could just stick it in a ponytail or a bun and it would look perfect on the first try. I started noticing how regular scrunchies didn’t work for my hair texture and I didn’t have the straightness in my hair like all my friends did. In my eyes, my hair wasn’t pretty enough and it definitely wasn’t long enough. I felt trapped in a space without any room for improvement. I had never really noticed a difference with my hair in middle school, but high school made me more self-conscious. I thought about getting a perm so it wouldn’t take so long to do in the mornings. Eventually, my hair became unhealthy because I didn’t realize that I wasn’t caring for it properly. Every morning I would drown my hair with products and water just to get my curl pattern as straight as possible. Soon, I noticed how my hair was breaking off and I decided to do something about it. Towards the end of the year, I finally convinced my mother to let me get box braids and Senegalese twists. My hair was able to grow along with my confidence. Once I took out the extra hair, I practiced daring and delicate hair styles I was too scared to try in the beginning of the year. My hair became easier to maintain and certain styles became easier to master. I finally stopped avoiding the impossible and just went with it. That was one fear I had never dreamed of conquering, and once I did, I thought I could conquer the world. • v2//i2 ON THE RECORD
17
SUMMER
BOOKS
REVIEWS
SUMMER SELECTION
Classics to read outside the classroom.
MUSIC
words by KARAC MEDLEY // design by ELLA MAYS
BEFORE THE STREETLIGHTS words by NICOLE WHITE // design by ELLA MAYS
photo courtesy of Perri Leigh Fields
→ Louisville-based pop-punk band Before the Streetlights (BTS) sounds like 2007 emo, has hair like 2005 Pete Wentz, and tours like 2003 Fall Out Boy. If you don’t pay attention, you might even think they’re time travelers from ten years ago. Early 2000’s pop-punk mixes with modern aesthetic and decade-spanning pop culture references to create a unique yet nostalgic product consisting of Tyler Courtney on guitar and vocals, Josh Courtney on bass and vocals, Tyler Pritchett on guitar, and Zach Schindler on drums. When I heard this band for the first time back in April of 2016, I didn’t know what to expect. It had been a while since I had seen a band perform live, and I was looking forward to hearing what these guys had to offer. In a show at Wick’s Pizza in New Albany that same month, they didn’t disappoint. Despite having to perform an unexpected acoustic set due to a broken set of drums, their energy filled the venue. The band enjoyed shouts of encouragement from the crowd, which was full of friends, first-time listeners, and long-time fans. Some were even wearing BTS merchandise, hands cupped around their mouths, yelling excitedly. By the time their set was over, I was invested. The band has released two EPs, four singles, and five official music videos to date. Their most recent release is the single “Homesick.” Written about loss, confusion, and where you stand in the 18
ON THE RECORD v2//i2
world, this hails true to the classic poppunk sound that defined the genre in the past. Their last EP release, Westward, is their most popular release, with the music video for “Goodnight, Goodbye” being played in over 1,000 Journey’s stores across the country and the album as a whole being praised online by multiple publications like Substream Magazine and Under The Gun Review. The band’s sound is commonly compared to that of All Time Low (a popular pop-punk band from Baltimore), but I found BTS to be a much better listening experience. Tyler and Josh provide refreshing two-part vocals that don’t sound too nasally like a lot of other bands in the genre. Despite their uniqueness, their lyrical content gives off the aforementioned nostalgic vibes while still remaining relevant to today’s culture. An example of this is the song titles on Westward. Tracks “Mischief Managed” and “I Solemnly Swear That I Am Up To No Good.” open and end the album, respectively, which is a reference to the Marauder’s Map in Harry Potter. Before the Streetlights is a band that went from playing in their garage six years ago to having over 30K Twitter followers and playing sold out venues, which most bands never accomplish. If you want a fun, energetic band that’s easy to dance to, then checking out this band will definitely be worth your time.•
→ “Wuthering Heights” is the sort of book which gets better with age and, even moreso, with the maturity of the reader. I’ve heard classmates refer to it as dry, and while at some points I agree, I feel that overall the book keeps you engaged enough that you can work through the slower sections. If you have already been assigned this book and enjoyed it, then I would like to also recommend Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” which touches on similar themes of mental illness and abuse, but leans more towards the horror genre. • → “The Awakening” is a great example of feminist literature written by a woman who devoted her life to representing the strength of women in many different situations. The “awakening” is that of the main character’s personality and desires, an awakening to which teenagers can relate. Audiences largely rejected the novel at the time of its writing, but it is now regarded as a classic. If you loved this book and want another sort of “awakening,” I would recommend James Joyce’s “Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man.” • → “Wise Blood” is a book that successfully satirizes the racism and empty religious convictions of the south, while also attacking the hypocrisy of the north. Every character is a villain in their own way, yet the book also undermines many of the stereotypes of people in the south. This story does well to subvert expectations and keep you guessing until the very end. If you’ve already read “To Kill A Mockingbird” and crave a darker version of the same sentiment, I recommend this book. •
the Young &
The Fascist Emboldened by the presidential election, white supremacists are recruiting youth under the guise of the “alt-right.” Here’s what you need to know. words by KARAC MEDLEY // art by DILLON PINHOLSTER v2//i2 ON THE RECORD
19
I
first knew it as an innocuous internet meme – the image of Pepe the Frog, which first appeared in the 2005 webcomic known as Boy’s Club, always with his catchphrase, “Feels good, man.” For anyone who hasn’t seen Pepe, the cartoon is a green blob that vaguely resembles a frog, a bizarre figure that I’ve encountered from time to time passively browsing the internet. The character has been placed into a wide variety of seemingly random situations through a series of memes known as “rare Pepes.” Over time I saw Pepe grow more and more grotesque as it became synonymous with hate. Variations of the meme were produced and spread from sites like 4chan, 8chan, and Reddit which combined the image with racist, sexist, homophobic, and overwhelmingly anti-Semitic imagery and words. Through the posting of this popular meme, many teenagers have unknowingly contributed to raising the profile of a hateful ideology. “Though Pepe memes have many defenders,” said the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), an organization devoted to combating harassment against minority groups, “the use of racist and bigoted versions of Pepe memes seems to be increasing, not decreasing.” How did this happen to this beloved cartoon character? Pepe’s original creator Matt Furie entirely disavows the use of the meme in service of hate, even creating a campaign with the ADL known as “#SavePepe.” The real culprits are part of a movement calling itself the “alternative right,” or “alt-right,” an unofficial coalition of right-wing extremists and trolls interested in attracting young people to an abusive ideology. “Trolls” – and the act
20
‘‘
of “trolling” – refer to people who make use of memes and provocative language in order to get a desired reaction. The loosely-defined group’s presence online tends to obscure the dangers of their ideology and mindset. A major tactic of the “alt-right” is normalization — making themselves and their hateful conceptions seem acceptable by way of memes and other public relations strategies. Even the name “alt-right” is a public relations term coined by Richard Spencer, the president of a white nationalist think tank known as the National Policy Institute. In fact, white nationalist or even “radical-right” would be a much more accurate name for the “altright.” White nationalism is an ideology which defines the white race as a nation which must be protected from “genocide,” referring to interracial marriage and the undermining of white cultural dominance. Overall, the greater composition of the “alt-right” either explicitly aligns with white nationalist rhetoric, or at the very least supports what is described in its definition. As an umbrella term, the so-called “altright” includes groups like the Traditionalist Youth Network (TYN), who sympathize with the ideologies of more recognized hate groups such as the National Socialist Movement and the Ku Klux Klan. However, white nationalists are not nearly as exclusive as those older, more recognized hate groups. White nationalists target conservatives and libertarians as well as Protestants, Catholics, and even atheists for potential membership. The only things their members have in common are that they are white, very conservative, and live in Western countries. If you use sites like Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, or Tumblr, it’s not unlikely that you’ve encountered a post by a white nationalist or white supremacist under the
banner of the so-called “alt-right.” While somewhat varied in regards to positions on issues, people using Spencer’s PR-friendly term to describe themselves almost unanimously voice white nationalist sentiments and racial hatred. Hate groups have always existed to a certain extent in small niches of the internet, but after the chaotic 2016 election, the movement has been able to find a much more mainstream foothold. Despite some engagement with white nationalist personalities on Twitter – including the account @WhiteGenocideTM, which had 22,000 followers before its suspension from Twitter and listed its location as “Jewmerica” – President Donald J. Trump eventually tried to distance himself from the movement in an interview with the New York Times on Nov. 23, when he stated that he doesn’t want to “energize the group” and that he disavows it. Yet it is undeniable that he, his cabinet, and at least some of their policies have been quite popular with the movement. For example, two members of his cabinet, White House Political Adviser Steve Bannon and Senior Counsel and Director of Strategic Affairs Ken Klukowski both worked for Breitbart News, Bannon being the former chairman. Breitbart News, a far right American news and commentary website, has employed writers affiliated with white nationalism and published articles favoring the movement, including “An Establishment Conservative’s Guide to the Alt-Right.” The article described the movement as having “a youthful energy and jarring, taboo-defying rhetoric that have boosted its membership and made it impossible to ignore.” The article defended white nationalist leaders, including Richard Spencer and Jared Taylor, both of whom have consistently voiced hateful and racist sentiments.
These ideas are unattainable, unnecessary, and a setback to the bettering of this nation.”
ON THE RECORD v2//i2
-Savannah Futrell (22), chair of Murray State University’s College Republicans, speaking on the “alt-right”
Trumped Up Tweets Before disavowing the “alt-right” in a November interview with the New York Times, Donald Trump engaged with “alt-right” personalities on Twitter on a number of occasions, often times through retweets. Here, Trump retweeted Jason Bergkamp, a writer for the “alt-right” publication Vanguard 14, at least six times over the course of his campaign. He also retweeted two tweets from “@WhiteGenocideTM,” an “alt-right” account which had a significant following before being suspended. @ WhiteGenocideTM stated its location as “Jewmerica,” with a banner that said “Get the f**k out of my country.”
Breitbart has also employed the popular “alt-right” figure Milo Yiannopoulos, who is most famous for the riots sparked by his speaking engagement at Berkeley University. (Yiannopoulos later resigned from Breitbart after conservatives found a video of him apparently endorsing pedophilia.) This past February Yiannopoulos appeared on the popular talk show “Real Time with Bill Maher” to defend himself and the so-called “alt-right.” This is not the only recent instance of mainstream media boosting these perspectives, and the movement has capitalized on this public exposure. The Los Angeles Times reported post-election meetings and rallies of white supremacists with no added scrutiny. Along with this, many publications like the New York Times and the Washington Post have used the word “right populist” when discussing the movement, a term which fails to acknowledge the extreme nature of its views. Media criticism groups like Media Matters say the press further normalizes the role the movement is playing in our politics and culture by covering the movement without diligently drawing attention to its racism and extremism. Normalization is the greatest tactic of modern white nationalists, and success in this area is the most dangerous aspect of the so-called “alt-right.” As the movement becomes part of everyday discussions, they are treated with greater political legitimacy and their ideas become part of the mainstream. Your neighbor, your coworker, or your friend could all be white nationalists who you never question since what they believe is no longer “extreme.”
Alternet’s Kali Holloway recently criticized NPR host Steve Inskeep’s interview with Joel Pollak, senior-editor-atlarge for Breitbart News, for not challenging Pollak’s counter-narrative denying Breitbart’s role in the movement. This was despite the fact that Bannon, a Breitbart founding member, famously called Breitbart a “platform for the alt-right” in an interview with Sarah Posner. “Pollak’s segment was a master class in obfuscation and a primer on how to flip the script and turn totally justified accusations of bigotry, misogyny and anti-Semitism into ‘reverse racism,’” Holloway said. Inskeep allowed Pollak to recite white nationalist talking points and nonfactual information without challenge. Allowing the far-right to have its say and propel its narratives means that the farright is controlling the conversation, not just participating in it. It is the duty of journalists to prevent the public from being misinformed, and in many recent cases regarding white nationalists they have failed to do so. Extremists are bleeding into the mainstream media, in addition to their exceedingly large platform online. On Twitter, Yiannopoulos and a number of white nationalist personalities have been instrumental in appropriating the Trump campaign for their own purposes. In a study of the “Pro-Trump, Alt-Right Twitterverse” by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), an anti-hate group education and legal organization, many of these influencers and their hashtags were revealed. “These accounts frequently used the platform to disseminate speech advocating
for ethnic cleansing, racial separatism and acts of violence against minorities, as well sharing openly racist, xenophobic, and antiSemitic imagery,” SPLC warned in an article published on their website on Nov. 7. Richard Spencer is a major personality among white nationalists on Twitter. Spencer himself became a meme unwillingly after being punched in the face by a protester during a live television interview at the 2017 inauguration in Washington, D.C. Spencer has made comments on Twitter which push forward “race realism,” a pseudoscientific study of “racial superiority” that attempts to justify hate, especially against Jewish people and people of color. By way of targeting youth and the political mainstream, Spencer and his associates have led initiatives to convert harmless hashtags and memes on Twitter into propaganda for the “alt-right.” He has been involved with the hijacking of 2016 presidential campaign hashtags along with memes like Pepe in order to stimulate support without the knowledge of other users. Reddit, the social news aggregator and discussion forum site, has also been popular with extremists. The site is divided into user-created forums known as subreddits, or “subs.” “The_Donald” is a popular sub on Reddit that was created by users to endorse the campaign of President Trump. It’s also one of the largest hubs for the white nationalists. While it is not officially connected to the Trump campaign or administration, MSNBC has noted that the sub receives over 10 million views per month, with its highest peak occurring in November v2//i2 ON THE RECORD
21
HATE MEMES EXPLAINED PEPE A crudely drawn green frog from the comic Boy’s Club, catchphrase is “feels good/feels bad man.”
WHAT IT MEANS Has been appropriated by the “alt-right.” Represented in Ku Klux Klan, Nazi, antisemitic, and generally racist iconography.
2016, the election month, at 100 million views. In an interview with MSNBC on April 4, 2016, the top moderator of “The_Donald,” going by the user name Ciswhitemaelstrom, attributed this overall popularity to the strategic application of “trolling.” His community and ones similar alienate Muslim users, trans and nonbinary users, and “Social Justice Warriors” (or just “SJWs,” a pejorative term against those vocal in supporting social justice issues). The subreddit “HateSubredditOfTheDay” was created to archive hateful posts from subs around Reddit and urge the site administrators to take down hate subs. The sub was founded under the belief “that Reddit, through one of its most popular subreddits, was celebrating hateful ideologies by shining a spotlight on them,” said “Minn-eesottaa,” an activist and top moderator of HateSubredditOfTheDay. “I’ve gotten positive feedback from leftists and even leftliberals, but generally all the criticism is the same rehashed ‘over-sensitive SJWs’ nonsense.” Then there’s doxxing, the practice of obtaining another person’s personal information without permission and posting it publicly. It is a common tactic of political activists online to undermine the anonymity of others as well as to bully and harass activists or political enemies.
22
ON THE RECORD v2//i2
Recently the sub “Altright” was banned from Reddit when the administrators discovered that many members were doxxing ideological opponents. “The alt-right has served to normalize racism, bigotry, and ignorance whether ironic or sincere,” Minn-ee-sottaa said. “On Reddit they’ve driven away many PoC (people of color) and contributing users who no longer want to deal with the barrage of hate. In the world, they help romanticize reactionary, hateful beliefs for younger people.” But the danger that looms is real. White nationalists aren’t confining their tactics and abuse solely to the internet. “I was actually at the Black Lives Matter protests in Minneapolis when altrighters fired at and hit five people in the crowd,” Minn-ee-sottaa said. In February, CBS Minneapolis reported that one of the shooters texted “Cool – the gun I’m getting is proven to kill black guys in a single shot” right before the attack on the protest. But that was not the only event where protesters were openly attacked by assailants clearly associated with white nationalism. Matthew Heimbach was caught on video at a March 2016 Trump rally shoving a University of Louisville student named Shiya Nwanguma, then 21. In a lawsuit, Nwanguma accused Heimbach and two other men of assault, along with President Donald Trump of inciting the violence by shouting at the crowd to “get them out.” Local activist Molly Shah, along with a 17-year-old Louisville Collegiate School student, Henry Brousseau joined Nwanguma as plaintiffs in the lawsuit. At press time, the lawsuit was still moving forward, and Kentucky police served Heimbach with a criminal summons related to the assault. Heimbach runs the white nationalist organizations Traditionalist Youth Network (TYN) and its political wing, the Traditionalist Worker Party (TWP). TYN and TWP stickers have appeared around the city, and their recruiters have distributed their propaganda on college campuses, but local activists are organizing in opposition.
In one instance, protesters confronted a group that included Louisville resident Scott Hess, a TYN organizer close to Heimbach, celebrating at the Irish Rover on Frankfort Avenue on April 20, Adolf Hitler’s birthday. They had publicly called for the celebration beforehand on a white nationalist message board, according to screenshots released by Anti-Racist Action, who organized the protest. A video of the event shows restaurant patrons joining the protesters in chanting “Nazis out.” The owner of the restaurant demanded that the white nationalists leave, which they did. Hess isn’t a private citizen; he keeps a high profile. In a Google search, Hess turns up alongside Heimbach in feature stories about the TYN and the TWP in multiple respected media outlets. In the New Republic’s “When the White Nationalists Came to Washington,” Heimbach explained that his organization helped form the Nationalist Front, an alliance of far-right groups that includes the Nationalist Socialist Movement, which the SPLC calls one of the nation’s largest neoNazi groups.
HATE MEMES EXPLAINED ECHOES Three parentheses placed around someone’s name or the name of an organization.
((( )))
WHAT IT MEANS An Anti-Semitic meme used to identify Jewish people online and mark them for harassment. Has been reclaimed by some Jewish celebrities online to represent Jewish solidarity.
HATE MEMES EXPLAINED “We have to work together,” Heimbach said to the reporter in reference to the Front’s allies. “And we have to realize that the violent, white supremacist rhetoric of old only hurts us.” The group’s strategy to tone down the image of white nationalists and mainstream the movement was evident in WAVE-3’s interview of Hess concerning the Irish Rover incident. “I spoke with his group and they told me they were just having dinner among friends,” WAVE-3 reporter Kasey Cunningham offered at the beginning of the news segment published on April 21. In spite of his group’s formal alliance with a neo-Nazi organization, Hess makes a point to distance himself from neo-Nazis, preferring to align himself with Trump supporters in two separate quotes, and accused the protesters of attacking reporters and “anyone who’s not a radical anarchist.” Not only did WAVE’s reporters not fact check these statements, they didn’t mention Hess’ affiliation with the TWP or TYN. Without providing any background information on Hess, viewers were left to decide if the gathering to celebrate Hitler’s birthday was actually just a group of Trump supporters enjoying a quiet dinner. But journalists should take this dangerous movement seriously. The extreme right has been a powerful and violent force in America. Timothy McVeigh, a Gulf War veteran with ties to white supremacist groups, committed the Oklahoma City bombing, which was the deadliest terrorist attack before 9/11. However, the Trump administration is planning on renaming “Countering Violent Extremism,” an FBI initiative meant to combat domestic terrorism, to “Countering Islamic Extremism,” which could obscure much of the danger that white nationalists and other right-wing extremists pose. Although anti-fascist protesters have a reputation for brawling with white nationalists — and white nationalists enjoy depicting themselves as victims — there are no instances of white nationalists being murdered by anti-fascists, and numerous examples of white nationalists (Dylann Roof, Frazier Glenn Cross, and James
Wenneker von Brunn, just to name a few) going on shooting rampages against minorities. And in January 2017, a Milo Yiannopoulous supporter shot an antifascist protester at an event in University of Washington, Seattle where Yiannopoulos was speaking. “Yiannopoulos and Breitbart News, where he is a celebrity editor, attempted to cast his supporters as the martyrlike victims in the shooting,” reported the Southern Poverty Law Center. “However, Hatewatch’s eyewitness version of events is precisely the reverse: The shooter was a Trump-supporting man who had been acting as a provocateur in the crowd all night, while the victim was an antifascist liberal who had been acting as a peacekeeper in the moments before he was shot.” Despite their growing mainstream appeal, the so-called “alt-right” and their violent encounters have not been accepted by some of the young, moderate right. “‘Alt-right’ is a movement I, and I as well can speak for all of my members, that we do not approve of,” said Savannah Futrell (22), a student and the chairwoman at Murray State University’s chapter of the Kentucky Federation of College Republicans. “These ideas are unattainable, unnecessary, and a setback to the bettering of this nation.” “We have not been approached by anyone ‘alt-right’ and most likely will not be,” Futrell said, “as our campus thankfully is a respectful campus and makes sure, with the help of faculty and leadership, that politics is handled in a mature and professional way. Murray, Ky is a place that consists of people with a kindness and understanding many aren’t used to. Radical things like this aren’t common where we are located, and I am very thankful for that.” Although white nationalists have gained notoriety and influence on the internet and beyond, there are also powerful forces combating them. The Anti-Defamation League and Southern Poverty Law Center, both mentioned before, are devoted to keeping track of iconography used by these groups and their adherents.
MOON MAN The crescent moon McDonald’s ad character, Mac Tonight. Often accompanied by racist iconography.
WHAT IT MEANS White supremacists appropriated this ad character to signify textto-speech rap “parodies” which insult, mock, and threaten people of color.
As a high school journalist, as a user of the internet, and as an engaged citizen, the ongoing normalization of the so-called “altright” has left me deeply disturbed. My research into this movement has led me to one unassailable conclusion: the socalled “alt-right” is not alternative anything. They are not an offshoot of any mainstream Republican or conservative line of thought, and as such they do not deserve a voice in our national discussion or a seat at the table. They are not noble activists fighting “political correctness” run amok, they are white supremacists. They are the ideological descendants of hate groups old and new. They find their heroes in the villains of history, from Klan founder Nathan Bedford Forrest to Adolf Hitler himself. It is my responsibility, and yours, to push back against this insidious way of thinking. When online, flag and report anything that falls into the category of white nationalism. When you see a reporter or talk show host give one of these people a platform from which they can spew their hate, criticize them for it. Call and email their stations, their producers. Refuse to allow hate speech to become a part of the daily conversation, because those who advocate for racial violence and ethnic cleansing don’t deserve to go unchallenged. •
v2//i2 ON THE RECORD
23
YOU’RE
TESTING MY 24
ON THE RECORD v2//i2
LIMITS
WHY DO SOME LEADERS WANT OUR SCHOOLS TO CHANGE, AND DO THEY HAVE A BETTER PLAN FOR JCPS? WE BREAK DOWN WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT NEIGHBORHOOD SCHOOLS, CHARTERS, AND NEW LEADERSHIP. words by HARPER CARLTON // design by SAM WEIBLE
A
s we woke up for school on the morning of April 14, most of us were unaware of the looming changes happening within our school system. As we brushed our teeth, combed our hair, and laced our shoes, questions about the day ahead raced through our minds. Will the biology test really be as hard as people say it is? Who should I pick as a partner for my social studies project? What’ll they serve for lunch today? Similar school-oriented thoughts occupied our teachers as well: How many days till summer break? Will I have time to grade these tests? What’ll they serve for lunch today? But that morning as our teachers arrived, many of them found a surprise in their school mailboxes. It was a small gift from the district – rectangular magnets bearing a pre-printed message of appreciation from Dr. Donna Hargens, the superintendent of our schools, along with her signature. In bold letters, the magnets read, “I AM JCPS.” Ironic, considering how soon Hargens herself would not be able to claim the same sentiment. The evening before, Hargens, the only superintendent that many JCPS students can remember, had conceded to pressure from the Board of Education (BoE) and negotiated an end to her contract. To most of us, this news was just another conversation in passing. But this announcement from Hargens was actually one of many important headlines regarding the operation of JCPS in the past few months; neighborhood schools, a statewide audit, and charter schools have all been in the news. It’s been hard to follow all of that news over the last year, since we’ve got academics to stress over, friendships to juggle, and issues outside of school to deal with on top of that. Even trying to understand conversations about state politics and school boards means we have to know the context of these changes – from education jargon to the current
district policies to the Louisville history that has shaped JCPS. But when it comes to school, we are the primary stakeholders: any changes will affect us most of all. So let’s educate ourselves on what it will really mean to say “I AM JCPS” in the coming years.
WHERE WE’VE BEEN
To really understand it all, we have to start from the beginning. In 1954, the Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education changed the face of public school education forever when it established that separate but equal institutions were inherently unjust, and thus state laws forming segregated schools were unconstitutional. This ruling was the first step to desegregation in Louisville, but in schools it was more symbolic than problem-solving. Public schools were still largely separated by neighborhoods, so neighborhoods that were majority white by default had predominantly white schools; likewise, black neighborhoods had black schools. On top of that, after legislators passed a series of civil rights laws in the 1960s, Louisville became more segregated than it had ever been before, according to Dr. Catherine Fosl, a professor at the University of Louisville’s Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research. Specifically, after the Fair Housing Act of 1968, whites fled areas like West Louisville in favor of the newly constructed suburbs. So, while segregation was no longer legally enforced after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the citizens of Louisville were electing to separate themselves. But in the 1970s things started to really change in Louisville’s schools. After the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Jefferson County to do something about the segregation that remained in its schools, officials took new steps toward widescale integration. The main way JCPS officials desegregated was through a system of forced busing: taking students from one
neighborhood and assigning them to a school across town to even out the racial ratio. This new system and the protests it sparked put Louisville in a national spotlight, Fosl said. There were mobs, roadblocks, and demonstrations, all part of an effort to harass black children right back into segregation. These changes took a toll on Louisvillians. Some parents even pulled their kids out of the public school system and put them in private schools to avoid busing and integration. In 1984, the district adopted a new plan to desegregate middle and high schools – satellite areas and magnets. While most students could now go to a school close to their home, magnet schools and programs were implemented so that students could self-select integration. In addition, magnet programs offer specialized learning focused on a specific content area (for example, technology or visual arts). Satellite areas were added, which meant that students could be assigned to a school far away as their home school. But it wasn’t long until there were new educational changes on the horizon. In 1990, Democratic Governor Wallace Wilkinson signed the Kentucky Educational Reform Act (KERA) into law. This sweeping piece of legislation was enacted to combat the struggles Kentucky was having with its educational outcomes. Before KERA, Kentucky ranked 50th in the nation for adult literacy and had the lowest percentage of adults with a high school diploma in America. In 1983, MIT economist David Birch described Kentucky as a “third world country with the nation’s most uneducated workforce.” This lead to 66 poor school districts suing the state in 1985, arguing that the financing of schools was inadequate and unequal. In the 1989 decision of Rose v. Council for Satellite areas: Areas from which the district draws students in order to place them in a school that lacks representation from their demographic class. v2//i2 ON THE RECORD
25
Better Education, Kentucky’s Supreme Court declared the state’s whole school system unconstitutional. Additionally, the state Supreme Court ordered the General Assembly to redistribute funding and guarantee equal educational opportunities for all students. KERA was the General Assembly’s attempt to remedy the state’s shortcomings. The act, in addition to dealing with the funding problem, attempted to make other changes in regards to accountability, student assessment, and legislative oversight of school districts. KERA, a bipartisan effort, put Kentucky’s educational system in national headlines again, but this time the stories were positive. Even President George H.W. Bush, a Republican, approved of this initiative that came from the left, signaling a sense of unity between the parties. In April 1990, Bush said, “In Kentucky, an entirely new philosophy of management is being put into place which is based on … accountability. That kind of creative thinking is government’s best role in education – setting goals, providing incentives, and then demanding accountability.” Despite all of the praise heaped on Kentucky for its educational innovations, there were still problems with school districts across the state, including JCPS. Fast forward 17 years, and JCPS is still grappling with some of the same issues as it was back then, among them low test scores, lack of resources, and long bus rides.
THE FIGHT THAT JUST WON’T END
Let’s start with one of those problems: long bus rides, which brings us back to the whole concept of busing. Truth be told, busing is inconvenient. It’s getting up early and getting home late, sitting in an uncomfortable or crowded bus for up to 2-3 hours a day. It’s living far away from school and sometimes having to skip basketball practice or student council so you have a guaranteed ride home. Those are the reasons that some people in Jefferson County would like to go back to neighborhood schools. Namely, Representative Kevin Bratcher (R) from Fern Creek, sponsor of House Bill 151 26
ON THE RECORD v2//i2
(HB151), also known as the ‘neighborhood schools bill.’ The bill, introduced on Jan. 6, aimed to give parents the option of placing their children in the school nearest to them, provided that the school was not a magnet or traditional school. Currently, high school students are assigned a ‘home school,’ and while home schools can be nearby, the satellite areas JCPS set up to promote diversity within schools don’t guarantee a short drive. Aside from home schools, JCPS has a multitude of magnets offering instruction in a specific content area or career path. Under HB151, students would
“IF I DIDN’T WANT TO RIDE A BUS THAT LONG, I COULD’VE TRANSFERRED TO A HOME SCHOOL. I WAS DOING IT TO MYSELF – IT WAS MY CHOICE.” - MADDIE KARCHAR (18) still be allowed to apply to magnet schools and programs. To understand the intended effects of the bill, it’s important to distinguish that “magnet programs,” such as the ones found at high schools like Atherton, Ballard, and Fern Creek, would be at risk, while “magnet schools,” which have no school enrollment based on residency, would be left alone. Under HB151, those schools with magnet programs and neighborhood students could have potentially filled up with the population of the surrounding area before any magnet applicants were even considered. Because of busing, the location of a school doesn’t have to be determined by the surrounding population; for the last several decades, students have traveled all across town to go to school. This introduces one of the logistical problems associated with switching to neighborhood schools. Take Atherton as an example: Because of population density in the Highlands, Atherton, relative to other
schools in JCPS, would have a very large residential population. Students applying to Atherton from elsewhere wouldn’t have even had their applications reviewed if all of the students around Atherton elected to attend, according to an analysis presented by JCPS officials. “It would actually provide less choice for families,” said Dena Dossett, Chief of Data Management for JCPS, regarding HB151. “It also limits diversity. We know that, because of residential segregation and segregated housing patterns, if we went to a neighborhood schools plan, then some schools would be less diverse than they are now.” Indeed, Jefferson County officials chose to continue busing students long after the court stopped its oversight because they recognized diversity as being important to education. According to a report by educational researchers at The Century Foundation, students in racially and socioeconomically diverse classrooms have higher test scores, are more likely to attend college, and are less likely to drop out before they graduate high school. Additionally, patterns of segregation are fiscally irresponsible for a community in the long run, according to a study called “The Cost of Segregation” published on March 28 and conducted in Chicago by the Urban Institute with Chicago’s Metropolitan Planning Council. People who grow up in a segregated setting are likely to have lower incomes and contribute less to their community’s economy, the study said. Plus, many students elect to be bused to JCPS’s many magnet programs. Take, for example, Maddie Karcher (18), a senior in Atherton’s International Baccalaureate (IB) program. Like most high school students, Karcher hates waking up early, but she woke up at 5:15 a.m. every day during her freshman and sophomore years so she could catch the bus by the time it arrived. “The bus was honestly awful,” Karcher said. “It came at 6 o’clock in the morning, and I didn’t get home until at least 3:45 because I had to go to a depot. That was really aggravating, but it was never aggravating to the point where I ever considered switching schools.” From the time she was in middle school, Karcher knew her home school of Jeffersontown High wasn’t the right choice for her. Karcher wanted the chance to take
on a more challenging curriculum in high school. Indeed, it was in Atherton’s IB biology class that Karcher was introduced to ecology; because of the class, Karcher made plans to major in ecology at Concordia University in Montreal. Karcher and many other students, parents, and community leaders were upset by the proposed neighborhood schools legislation, so they rallied against the bill at JCPS administrative offices and in Frankfort at the Capitol. Eventually, HB151 passed in the House but failed to get a full vote in the Senate. That said, HB151 may not be gone for good; it’s not the first failed neighborhood schools bill in the past 10 years. In 2011, Kentucky’s Senate passed a similar bill, with a 21-17 vote. Republican Senator Den Seum from Jefferson County co-sponsored Senate Bill 3 (SB3) with former Senate President David Williams, a Republican from Burkesville. SB3 would have changed Jefferson County’s student assignment plan by instituting both neighborhood and charter schools, but the bill failed after being introduced in the House. In the same year, the JCPS BoE decided to let former Superintendent Sheldon Berman go; one of the things for which Berman came under fire was the implementation of the student assignment plan. In 2007, the year Berman took the superintendent position, JCPS was forced to change its student assignment plan after the Supreme Court struck it down for being racially discriminatory. In the following years, parents complained that their students were being placed in schools far away, enduring sometimes hours-long bus rides. Hargens, too, endured comments about busing for her entire tenure; these complaints, among others, contributed to diminishing public approval over the years, along with added tension with the BoE.
WHY IS HARGENS GOING?
Last fall, as Chris Kolb was running for his seat on the Jefferson County BoE, one of his campaign platforms was that new leadership was needed within JCPS. Kolb, who later won the District 2 seat over former BoE chairman David Jones Jr., went door-todoor in his district, assessing his neighbors’
THE WHEELS ON THE BUS: Maddie Karcher (18), a student in Atherton’s International Baccalaureate (IB) program testifies at a rally in Frankfort against HB151 on March 6. “If I didn’t want to ride a bus that long, I could’ve transferred to a home school,” Karcher said. “I was doing it to myself – it was my choice.” // photo by Liz Palmer
problems with the current school system. He reported that most of them had the same concern: urgency. “The biggest thing that I observed, which was corroborated by the thousands of people whose doors we knocked on in the district, was that we needed a greater sense of urgency to fix some of the shortcomings the district was facing,” Kolb said. “People were just getting impatient on the pace of improvements on some critical issues.” In fact, more than just Kolb’s constituents are getting restless with JCPS’s rate of improvement. On Feb. 8, in an interview with conservative talk show host Leland Conway, Governor Matt Bevin said, “JCPS is a disaster in terms of the educational results. They have more failing schools than the entire rest of the state combined. It is an absolute, unmitigated mess.” Results from state test scores in the 2015-2016 year show that more than half of the students in the district are not performing at grade level in reading and math. Furthermore, data from the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) revealed that only 66 of the district’s 139 tested schools met the state’s annual performance goal; that number is down from 74 schools
in the 2014-2015 school year and 96 in 2013-2014. Moreover, the achievement gap between black and white students widened from 28.4 percent in the 2014-2015 school year to 29.4 percent in 2015-2016. And while 58 percent of white students scored proficient in reading and math, only 29 percent of black students did. In addition to its problems with educational results, JCPS is undergoing a state management audit which could potentially lead to a state takeover. In a Courier-Journal article about the audit published on Feb. 14, Kentucky’s Commissioner of Education Steven Pruitt noted that he was concerned in particular with safety measures used in JCPS, including the usages of seclusion and restraint. Some other areas the audit is focusing on are discrepancies in data, communication
State takeover: The Kentucky Department of Education can come into a district to handle its finances, administration, operations and other responsibilities that the school board and superintendent would normally handle. v2//i2 ON THE RECORD
27
NEW DIRECTION: On March 6 at a rally in the Capitol building, Superintendent Donna Hargens discusses a JCPS analysis that projects Atherton’s student population under HB151. Hargens’ contract will end on July 1; the JCPS Board of Education is seeking a replacement. “I’m looking for someone who’s willing to make tough choices to put kids first,” said board member Chris Kolb.. // photo by Liz Palmer
within the district, and disproportionate punishments among students. Hargens has served as JCPS superintendent since the 2011-2012 school year, when she left her job in Wake Forest, N.C., to replace Berman. Her contract wasn’t due to expire until June 2019, but at a special meeting on April 13, Hargens and the BoE negotiated an end to her contract, effective July 1. In exchange for her resignation, the board will pay Hargens $48,000 in place of the money she would have received for healthcare benefits, and ultimately she could receive up to $200,000 of the amount she was to receive under her prior contract. The BoE is currently interviewing candidates for the position of interim superintendent. Kolb said that the interim superintendent will likely be in place for the state maximum of nine months. State law stipulates that a district can only hire an interim for six months, and their contract can be renewed, at most, for three more months. “After we get the interim in place, we’re going to look at a number of factors for the permanent superintendent,” said Chris 28
ON THE RECORD v2//i2
Brady, the board chair. “The most important factor being ‘what does the community have to say?’”
UNCHARTED TERRITORY
Whoever is chosen as the new superintendent will have an additional challenge ahead of them, one that no superintendent in Kentucky has ever faced: charter schools. On March 21, Governor Bevin signed into law House Bill 520 (HB520), which allows the creation of charter schools in Kentucky. Unlike public schools, which operate under the school board and district, charter schools are run by outside organizations. Charters are publicly funded through taxes, and do not charge tuition. To establish a charter school, the outside organizations must sign a contract, or a charter, with an authorizer. Under HB520, either the local school district or the mayors of Louisville and Lexington have the right to authorize charters within their jurisdiction. The reasoning behind the bill, as written in its text, is that “reducing achievement gaps in Kentucky is necessary
for the state to realize its workforce and economic development potential.” The sponsors of the bill, Republicans John Carney and Richard Heath, said that the past and present measures to reduce these learning gaps have been insufficient. Advocates of charters say that having fewer regulations allows for more innovative ways of teaching and thus better educated students. There is also the idea that charter schools will push those in charge of public schools to improve because of the increased sense of competition. “Public education should not be about competition,” Brady said of charters. “It should be about providing an environment that’s conducive to learning and cooperation among many partners throughout the community.” In 1991, Minnesota became the first state to enact charter school legislation. Since then, 44 other states have approved charter school laws, including Kentucky. Because other states have had charters for nearly 30 years, there is a lot of data out there, but the results have been mixed. One success story is that of Keiller Leadership Academy, a K-8 charter school in San Diego, formerly known
as Keiller Middle School. When the school was reopened as a charter in 2005, administrators and teachers partnered with the University of San Diego (USD) to develop new structure, schedule, and curriculum for what was once listed by the Department of Education as a top ten “persistently dangerous school.” According to the California Charter Schools Association, in its first year as a charter, suspensions at Keiller declined by 33 percent and teacher retention increased by 40 percent. USD faculty taught professional development to Keiller staff and USD students served as tutors and student-teachers to Keiller students; by its second year Keiller had improved its score on California’s Academic Performance Index by 79 points (each school has between 200 and 1000 points). However, critics argue that many charters don’t actually serve all students, and instead only benefit those whose parents can afford to spend the time and effort required by contracts that charters want parents to sign. These requirements exclude many working parents who can’t take off work for required volunteer hours. In addition, having the wherewithal and resources to enroll one’s child in a charter school is often beyond the grasp of working-class and impoverished families. Charter schools have not been universally successful, which led the JCPS BoE to be hesitant about their arrival in Kentucky, especially given the terms of their authorization. During a board meeting on Jan. 10, the JCPS BoE adopted the position that the sole authorizers of charter schools should be locally-elected school boards. When the board learned that Mayor Greg Fischer had been working with legislators in Frankfort to give him the power to authorize charter schools in Jefferson County, Kolb and some other members felt betrayed. “With HB520, the mayor really overstepped his bounds,” Kolb said. “When you look at places with mayoral control [of the school district], most notably Chicago, it’s just an absolute wreck.” Indeed, charter schools in Chicago have come under fire after data showed that children attending charter schools underperformed those in Chicago Public Schools. A study from the Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity at the University
of Minnesota Law School claimed that growth and pass rates in reading and math were lower at charter schools, as are graduation rates. Additionally, charter schools are less diverse than traditional schools with only 7 percent of Chicago charter schools found to be diverse, compared to the 20 percent of Chicago neighborhood schools that are considered to be diverse. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is a proponent of charter schools; while he does not have the power to authorize charter schools himself, he does appoint the authorizing body – the school board – giving him added control. Under HB520, Kentucky could see charter schools as soon as the 20182019 school year. With Mayor Fisher, a proponent of the ‘choice school movement’ and charters, serving as an authorizer, Louisville could see them in the 2018-2019 school year as well.
“AT THIS POINT WE ARE A MINORITY-MAJORITY DISTRICT; MORE THAN HALF OF OUR STUDENTS ARE NONWHITE.” - CHRIS KOLB, BOARD OF EDUCATION
SO WHAT’S NEXT?
Though stakeholders may disagree on the course of action needed within JCPS, they agree that some kind of change is needed within Jefferson County and its schools. One of the BoE’s main objectives is to close the achievement gap, which Kolb said should be handled partially through a mixture of restorative practices and cultural competency training. “At this point we are a minoritymajority district; more than half of our students are nonwhite,” Kolb said. “That’s who we are, and we have to do a better job of serving those students.” Kolb also said that Metro government, specifically Metro Council, needs to take measures to ensure the success of students before they even get in the classroom.
“When you’re trying to educate kids that come from extreme poverty – kids that may not have eaten breakfast or dinner the night before, kids that might have slept a different place every night for the past week because they have housing insecurity – we’re just not going to be greatly successful in educating those kids,” Kolb said. “The whole community needs to call upon Metro Council to do a better job of taking care of children in our city.” The bottom line is that there’s a lack of student achievement in Jefferson County. Some people blame segregation, while others blame busing, saying it’s time to go back to neighborhood schools so the community in one neighborhood will push its kids to succeed. Some say the problem is the system itself. With over 100,000 students, JCPS is one of the largest school systems in America, and so some advocates claim charter schools can cater more specifically to student needs and compete with public schools in a way that will make both both successful. Some say the problem is leadership, which is why they called for the exit of Hargens and are seeking a replacement who will listen to community concerns and act with an added urgency But in all these discussions, there’s often a voice missing – the students of JCPS themselves. So it’s time that we, as students, take more responsibility for our school district. What can we do about our own success? “Our board wants to make efforts to ensure that the student voice is heard and is a part of the conversation,” Brady said. “In my opinion as a board member, it is important that we hear that – it’s all about our kids – but far too often we don’t hear student voices and we’re trying to make changes to fix that.” •
Restorative practices: An alternative to punitive measures that attempts to promote dialogue, accountability, and community by bringing together the person harmed and the person who caused the harm. v2//i2 ON THE RECORD
29
The Fruits Of
LABOR 30
ON THE RECORD v2//i2
Local teenage moms and moms-to-be find refuge in the Louisville Teenage Parent Program schools.
R
words by CAMERON DANIEL & MELISSA SCIANIMANICO // design by ELLA MAYS
enée Sturgeon, a soon-to-be mother in the Louisville Teenage Parent Program (TAPP), was not surprised when her sleep was again interrupted by the pressure on her bladder. Midnight bathroom runs had been a common occurrence throughout Renée’s pregnancy, even more so as her due date approached. But, as she rolled out of bed, it was apparent that the night of June 29th would be different. Renée was used to restless nights filled with back pains and snack cravings, but the dampness on her sheets and the trickle of liquid down her leg caught her completely off guard. Renée’s body was now controlled by her baby’s will, and, to be honest, her mere 15 years of life had not prepared her for the massive physical changes the tiny being inside her was capable of inducing. What was this uncomfortable dampness on her pajama bottoms? She wasn’t quite sure; she would ask mom in the morning. Mom always knew the answer. So, dazed and distressed, Renee went back to bed. In the morning, Shelley Sturgeon went to peek in on her two teenage children as she always did, especially considering her daughter Renée’s approaching due date. When she saw that Renée was uncharacteristically awake at 9 a.m. on a summer morning, she knew that something was amiss. After an emergency call to Renée’s doctor and a rushed car ride to the hospital, Renée was shocked to learn that her water had broken in the night. This was it; she was in labor. “That’s when it all got real. Everything happened in 12 hours,” Renée said. By 9:25 that evening Renée was a mother, but she was also still a student, still a dependent, and still a child. Labor broke down the tough façade Renee had constructed throughout her pregnancy; in fact, it took the birth of Stella to falter Renée’s previously unshakable mindset. “Labor was the moment when I realized I was taking on so much. I was freaking out, crying. I was so scared. I finally knew I couldn't do this alone,” Renée said.
lows, Renée is part of the nearly 750,000 American teenagers who become pregnant each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy says that only about half of teen mothers will get their high school diploma by age 22. When Stephanie Adams, an alumnus of South Park TAPP, found out she was pregnant at 17, she feared becoming a part of those statistics. “If it wasn't for TAPP I would have never graduated. I was literally flunking out of school when I was pregnant,” Adams said. In order to combat this issue directly, the Louisville Teenage Parent Program (TAPP) schools were created in 1970. Located in Westport and South Park, the TAPP schools function as pathways that cater to the unique needs of teenage mothers like Renée. School services include childcare, family support and counseling, career pathways, transportation, and access to on-site medical care, allowing attendees to prosper both as students and as mothers. “Honestly, if it weren't for TAPP I don’t think I would be able to stay in school, let alone dream about going to college,” said Renée, now a 16-year-old sophomore at TAPP. TAPP works to help alleviate America’s nearly 60% national high school dropout rate for teen mothers, as well as to eliminate the obstacles these girls face, with the ultimate goal being graduation and higher education. The school implements various unique educational programs to help reach this goal. For example, the TAPP-exclusive program Project Science Math And the Right Technology (SMART), requires an application as well as an 85% attendance rate and at least a 2.0 grade point average. Members of Project SMART can attend college tours and job shadowing trips that can help them discover their interests and propel them into the workforce. Before girls can begin thinking about college, they must start at step one: balancing motherhood along with their education.
THE NATIONAL ISSUE
CHILD CARE
Although the teenage birth rate in the U.S. has fallen almost continuously since 1991 and is now at historic
One of TAPP’s biggest attractions for teen moms is its publicly-subsidized, on-site child care that works with v2//i2 ON THE RECORD
31
babies two weeks to three years of age. This service doubles as both a daycare and a learning facility for the children of students enrolled in the TAPP Program. “I love the daycare. They are able to introduce my son and me to new things. I would never have given my one-year-old son a paintbrush if it weren't for this program,” said Andrea Patterson (18), a senior at Westport TAPP. While the daycare is 100% free of charge for TAPP students, this has not sacrificed the quality of care children receive. The facility is federally approved and rated by the Stars for Kids Now! system, which ensures the safety and legitimacy of daycares across Kentucky. “Just trying to do homework was crazy, so knowing that there was a place where I could go to school and keep my baby boy safe without having to pay for childcare took such a weight off my shoulders,” Adams said. Although the babies are a significant aspect of the TAPP school experience, interaction between students and their children is rare and frankly discouraged throughout the school day, save for breastfeeding and cases of emergency. “Our onsite daycare facilities allow moms to breastfeed and have that nurturing mother role, while also being able to multitask and complete their high school diploma,” said DeLena Alexander, the principal of both TAPP schools. But even with TAPP’s efforts to offer childcare during the school day, students’ studies are inevitably interrupted by other demanding and sometimes unexpected realities of teenage motherhood. Whether it's frequent doctor appointments or sudden waves of nausea, it is likely that health concerns will distract students from their work. Fortunately, TAPP’s on-site, fully functional medical clinic allows mothers and their babies to receive professional medical care from University of Louisville residents without leaving campus. “It really helps us with attendance because girls don’t have to miss school for a doctor’s appointment,” said Whitney Stewart, the academics advisor at the TAPP schools. Recently, Principal Alexander decided to expand the clinic’s services by adding WIC or Women Infant and Children, a food assistance program that provides nutrition education and services,
32
ON THE RECORD v2//i2
breastfeeding promotion and education, and access to maternal, prenatal and pediatric health-care services. “Typically,” Stewart said, “you would sign up for WIC at a Neighborhood Place, like a local clinic, which are located in certain communities that some girls can’t get to.” Students can now reap the benefits of the WIC program, such as health screenings and health education, while also being able to attend a full day of school.
STUDENT-TEACHER CONNECTION
TAPP also works to improve the lives of students outside of the classroom. Adams enrolled at TAPP when she was 17 and pregnant with her first son. “I was very quiet, dealing with home stuff,” Adams said. “But I knew if I needed them, the counselors would be there for me, and I could see that because I was failing my junior year and they pulled me through that.” TAPP’s Family Programs sector was created just for that purpose – to offer a support system that can benefit student success in both academic and family life. The Family Programs’ staff members help point students towards programs that can
“If TAPP weren’t an option, I don’t think I’d be in school. Once I had her, I don’t think I could go back.” - Renée Sturgeon (16) cater to their individual needs, such as aid for food, housing, clothing, and even utility bills. The intimate interactions that are fostered through these programs create an environment that is unique from that of any other academic atmosphere, which allows for students and staff to engage in profound relationships. When the last bell rings at 2:20, most students race out of their classes to finally return home after a full school day. Most
students wouldn’t delay their departure for a personal conversation with their teacher. Most students, however, do not have student-teacher relationships similar to the ones developed at TAPP. When the end-of-day bell rings at Westport TAPP, Stewart walks down the halls of the child care wing. A wave of students flows into the hallway as smiling girls make their way to pick up their children. As each girl passes by, Stewart’s face melts into a gentle smile that the girls reciprocate immediately. Despite their eagerness to see their babies, students stop to casually talk to Stewart about their classes and personal lives. One student waves Stewart down to introduce the counselor to her mother, who was visiting the school that afternoon. “Ms. Stewart's like a big sister to me, she’s always checkin’ on me,” the student said. “That’s right, I'm always here to make sure she’s doin’ well,” Stewart said playfully, bumping the girl on the hip. “Bye, Ms. Stewart,” the girl waved and smiled. The supportive environment that TAPP fosters radiates throughout the students' personal lives as well as within the walls of the Louisville TAPP schools. This support, paired with TAPP’s unique programs, encourages students to both attend and excel in school. Alexander is aware that her girls have more hardships than most and has found it helpful to offer incentive programs to encourage the students to show up to school. “They get to shop with attendance dollars, so every day they come to school they get a dollar point,” Stewart said. “Dollar points” allow students to “shop” in a store of donated items. “They are able to give me things I need, like diapers, wipes, clothes for me, and clothes for my baby,” Patterson said.
HOW TO BE A MOTHER
In addition to the goods and resources that will improve their babies' lives, TAPP also tries to impart the knowledge its charges will need as students and parents. Along with regular middle and high school courses, TAPP provides classes in prenatal and postpartum care, family planning, child development, child care, and parenting skills.
“They made toys for the baby and they even learned how to do a growth chart. The class is teaching Renée things I didn't even know after having two kids,” Shelley said. “It's interesting because obviously these girls benefit especially from that class, but it's almost like any girl or boy should be taking that class, so we're really lucky that TAPP was able to offer that for her.” When Renée and her newborn child Stella returned home from the hospital, Renée was immediately struck by the realization that this was going to be a difficult process. Suddenly, her nights were dictated by her daughter’s sleeplessness, and her days were spent in an exhausted blur. Those early hours of the morning were the moments that she found herself questioning: Where do I go from here? Why is she crying? What do I do? She had so much to learn, so much work ahead of her. “That first week was horrible because you’re in so much pain from giving birth and you still have to wake up every two to three hours to feed her in the night, and you’re learning everything. It’s hard,” Renée said. TAPP’s childhood development classes help to relieve some of the stress of
these first difficult weeks of motherhood, teaching the students vital information on what to expect and how to react. Renee believes that these classes equipped her with skills that helped her navigate through the confusing process of motherhood, all in an environment free of condemnation. “One thing that I do really enjoy about being here at TAPP is that I can feel and I can see when my work is impactful,” Stewart said. “I feel like outside of school, girls can experience shaming from parents, peers, religion, whatever, but I feel like here it’s not like that. So that contributes to being able to create more intimate relationships.” Typical high school courses such as home economics and family consumer science take on a whole new meaning for TAPP students. While these classes may not seem relevant to an average student, the girls at TAPP are able to directly reap the benefits. “It’s one thing to tell these girls ‘one day you will need this,’ and it’s something totally different to say ‘when you go home, you are going to know how to feed your child right now,’ or ‘when you go into labor, you can use these skills right now,’ or ‘when you’re planning your budget for you and your child trying to pay for daycare, you can
SWING LOW: On Feb. 4, Andrea Patterson (18) took her two-year-old son Anthony to a playground near her house. “I really didn’t think I’d ended up bonding with him,” Patterson said, “but we’re so close. He’s the greatest person. Literally, he’s my best friend.” // photo by KELSEY WUNDERLICH
use this right now,’” said Kameron White, a family consumer science teacher at TAPP. White emphasized that her teaching style did not change when she began teaching at TAPP, and that TAPP’s academic environment is comparable to that of any high-performing school. “I don’t do anything differently because being a parent doesn’t make you incapable of doing the work,” White said. “I don’t want them to get comfortable with being treated differently because they have a special situation.” This mindset has allowed TAPP students to defy the stereotypes, to defeat their unique challenges, and to become successful young students, mothers, and people. “If TAPP weren't an option, I don’t think I’d be in school. Once I had her, I didn’t think I could go back,” Renée said.
AFTER TAPP
Now, after attending South Park TAPP for nearly a year, Renée is set on attending nursing school at Spalding University after she graduates. She now understands the hardships of motherhood, as well as all of its overwhelming triumphs. The fears that she faced on the eve of her child’s birth have transformed into pure adoration for her daughter. “It’s awesome. I wouldn’t wish it for anybody this young, but being a mom is the best feeling in the world. I wouldn’t trade her for anything,” Renée said as she looked towards her sleeping child with a smile. In 1989, 17-year-old Stephanie Adams was in the same position as Renée. Now, 18 years later, she walks into her kitchen each morning before her job as a closer at Amerisave Mortgage Company and makes breakfast for her children. Her youngest daughter, McKayla, may grab a little coffee mug for her morning hot chocolate, a little mug that Adams had earned at her high school graduation ceremony. “Be careful with that, that’s important to me,” Adams says to her child for what seems like the hundredth time. This mug isn’t just a little mug, it’s a symbol of her triumph. “Getting that little mug meant a lot. I knew I did it: I had a baby and I graduated,” Adams said with a smile; a smile that was proud, a smile that was dignified. •
v2//i2 ON THE RECORD
33
34
ON THE RECORD v2//i2
The Beginning of the End for Sexual Assault in Schools words by LUCY CALDERON // design by OLIVIA BROTZGE
I
illustration by DILLON PINHOLSTER // coloring by KIM LE
t began like most school days. I had an assignment due, and I wanted to earn an A. I had practiced my delivery, but as soon as I began to speak in front of the class about sexual assault and harassment in schools, something changed. I felt an extra chill in the alreadycold classroom. I started to recognize that my informative presentation had turned into something much more personal. Faces flushed with shock and sadness. My heart pounded. After presenting the basic information, I moved through my 25-slide presentation for a second time and related it back to my own personal experiences. I am a part of the 48% of high school and middle school students who have experienced sexual assault. I am a part of the 35.8% of sexual assaults that happen to people between the ages of 12 and 17. As I revisited my experiences in front of the class, I processed them in a completely different way. What was once just a project had turned into something that meant more to me, and as I looked out into the crowded classroom through blurry eyes, I could tell it now meant a lot more to others. An informative presentation had turned into a cry for help – a cry for action. The way people think about sexual assault as overtly violent discredits how ordinary it can be. Sexual assault can happen as quickly as walking down a bus aisle, when a student grabs another passing classmate. Sexual assault – and harassment – can be dismissed by surrounding students and those in authority, but for the victim it can have lasting repercussions.
COMING TO TERMS
American Association of University Women The United States Department of Justice National Sex Offender website “Sexual assault is any type of sexual contact or behavior that occurs without the explicit consent of the
recipient. Falling under the definition of sexual assault are sexual activities as forced sexual intercourse, forcible sodomy, child molestation, incest, fondling, and attempted rape.” — U.S. Department of Justice
I started therapy at the beginning of sophomore year to help me cope with an event unrelated to sexual assault. After working through that, the sessions soon transitioned into other problems I was having. My therapist gave me a homework assignment to write down whenever something was bothering me, so we would have things to talk about the next time I saw her. As I went about my week, taking notes on my phone of all my little sad moments, I noticed that the majority of my notes were about sexual assault and harassment. It was startling because I had never seen myself as a sexual assault victim. I didn’t realize what was happening until I had to write it down. I didn’t notice how constant the incidents were, and situations that wouldn’t have fazed me before now did. Now as a sophomore, I can trace the incidents – students plucking at my bra straps or discussing how fast my body was developing – to as early as fifth grade. That alone freaked me out because then I was just a child then. It concerned me that “normal” incidents were the source of my problems. I consider sexual assault and harassment a big deal, yet I was treating these actions as if they were behaviors I had to tolerate. My realizations led me to a gutwrenching thought: Sexual assault and harassment were so embedded in my life that I had never even noticed it.
NATIONAL IMPACT
Sexual assault and harassment happens, and it happens with alarming frequency.
v2//i2 ON THE RECORD
35
In fact, it was a hot topic in the recent presidential election. The Washington Post released a recording from 2005 of now-President Donald Trump saying to former “Entertainment Tonight” host Billy Bush, “You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful – I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ‘em by the pussy. You can do anything.” Then over a dozen accusers came forward to allege that Trump acted in accordance with his words. For example, one accuser, Jessica Leeds, a businesswoman who sat next to Trump on a plane in the early 1980s, told the New York Times that he groped her and attempted to slide his hand up her skirt. A model named Kristen Anderson told the Washington Post she was at a New York nightclub in the 1990s when Trump tried to slide his fingers under her skirt.⁴ Trump denied their allegations. In a recording from the Howard Stern Show in 2005 that surfaced during the campaign, Trump said that going into women’s dressing rooms was a benefit of his owning the Miss Universe and Miss USA pageants. “You know, they’re standing there with no clothes,” Trump said in the recording. “‘Is everybody okay?’ And you see these incredible looking women, and so, I sort of get away with things like that.” Contestants for both the Trump-owned Miss Teen USA and Miss USA pageants came forward to confirm that Trump did in fact enter their dressing rooms while the girls were changing. Despite the Howard Stern Show recording, his campaign denied these incidents ever happened, pointing to statements from other contestants who said they didn’t recall it happening. So what are the consequences? While Billy Bush has since been fired from “Entertainment Tonight” because of his role in that incident, Trump escaped unscathed from the scandals, going on to become the 45th President of the United States. It wasn’t the first time that a political figure has been accused of sexual assault or harassment. Connecticut politician Christopher von Keyserling was arrested after being caught on a security camera grabbing the genitalia of one of his employees. Paula Jones, one of former President Bill Clinton’s Arkansas campaign office employees, claimed that in 1991, 36
ON THE RECORD v2//i2
Clinton pulled down his pants in a hotel room and tried to get her to perform oral sex. Mark Foley, a former Republican congressman from Florida resigned from his House of Representative duties after being accused of asking Congressional pages for pictures of their genitals. When the many defenders of powerful harassers brush off this type of behavior, it not only says the behavior is okay, but it actually encourages it to continue. Adults need to lead by example, or children will be taught to dismiss signs or harassment as “locker room talk”— after all, that’s what their president is saying. Yet the way that the Trump accusations mobilized people worldwide could be a sign that society is paying attention. In January, men and women gathered around the world in support of women’s rights and other social issues on the same day as the inauguration. These marches, which took place in Sydney, Berlin, London, Paris, and Kenya just to name a few, were in part a global response to these allegations, and addressing these issues hasn’t always been a public topic of conversation, as well as centuries of women’s rights issues. While these marches have expanded and given a louder voice to the movement, the issues remain misunderstood. Too often, perpetrators and their defenders dismiss it as “just talk” or “boys being boys.” The denial exhibits another problem that many don’t see – such talk makes an atmosphere more conducive to further victimization. Donald Trump’s dismissal of his words and the actions he bragged of as just “locker room talk” speak to his lack of understanding of the issues, damage that is more evident to the victims who have survived being violated. Interestingly enough, President Trump declared April to be National Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month. Supporters point to it as a heartfelt call to action; critics dismiss it as a public relations stunt.
SHORT INCIDENTS, LONG TERM CONSEQUENCES
When I sat down to talk over the list with my therapist, she explained to me that what I was going through was in no way normal or okay. The small but constant instances of sexual assault and harassment were the root of many of my internal struggles. We observed that my experiences have made me self-conscious. Remarks about
my body made me feel very uncomfortable in my own skin. Everyday, I pick apart my appearance, in part because the constant comments have made me more aware of myself physically. I read a quote that I understood well. It came from a fellow journalist, Natasha Stoynoff, who alleged that Trump sexually assaulted her while interviewing him at Mar-a-Lago in 2005 for People Magazine. “In those few minutes alone with Trump, my self-esteem crashed to zero,” she said. “How could the actions of one man make me feel so utterly violated?” The persistent negative thoughts made me think that my body isn’t beautiful. For a long time, I was insecure about my body to the point of not really caring about myself. I brushed aside incidents that bothered me thinking that since they were so common, they shouldn’t have been as bad as they felt. It took years of sleepless nights for me to learn that my feelings are valid. I did not see my experiences as preventable problems yet, but they still bothered me. This led to me dreading school days. There, I often focused not on what I was learning in class, but on keeping my eyes open. As I became more aware of these problems, I began to think of more ways that sexual assault and harassment has affected myself and others. I realized how such abuse could lead to unhealthy relationships. For one, I’ve noticed how difficult it was for me to realize when I was being treated poorly in a relationship, and two, I was in the habit of settling for what I thought I deserved. Additionally, victims might not stick up for themselves in a sexual situation because of the same bad habits from those poor relationships, resulting in intercourse without clear consent. No one should feel that way. There have been times when I have felt unsafe at school. I’ve left class a little after the bell and been late to my next block on purpose just to avoid certain perpetrators. I can only assume that other students have felt the need to do the same. My negative feelings toward myself make me so thankful for the people in my life. I have friends and family to show that I am significant. My experiences would have affected me more severely if I didn’t ⁴ People Magazine, “Everything You Need to Know About the Sexual Assault Allegations Against Donald Trump Before Election Day,” by Lindsay Kimble.
have positive influences. Not everyone is blessed with those people. It also taught me about victim-blaming, which places blame on the victims of abuse or crime. The nonprofit Center for Relationship Abuse Abuseness explains the consequences: “Victim-blaming attitudes marginalize the victim/survivor and make it harder to come forward and report the abuse.” I was a casualty of others’ ignorance of sexual assault and harassment. I victimblamed myself. I didn’t realize that it wasn’t about what I was doing; it was about what the perpetrators were doing. Changing perceptions can help eliminate sexual harassment and assault for everyone. We need to call out our friends on social media when we see unsolicited comments about women’s bodies. Some assailants are not fully aware of the damage they are doing. Something has to be done.
They began to realize they weren’t alone. My teacher let students stay after class to compose themselves. We all sat in a huddle, sharing personal experiences, hugging, crying. Finally sorrow turned to motivation, and the conversation switched from what had happened to what we could do to stop it from happening to others. The discussion was about what we as journalists and people could accomplish, not what schools and higher authority could do. I’ve heard so many incidents where sexual assault took place in a classroom, and the major question was ‘Where was the teacher during all of this?’ We should also ask ourselves, ‘Where were the students?’ We can’t rely completely on a teacher; we should be able to speak out ourselves. The school system and people in power should do everything they can to help the situation, but it really comes down to us. We need to change as individuals and as a society.
TIME TO ACT
I’ve heard of companies that require sexualassault and harassment prevention training for their employees. That made me wonder if there was any form of training required for my school. A Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS) spokesperson told me that schools show an eight minute harassment and discrimination video to students in grades four through 12. But I had no idea what video the spokesperson from JCPS was talking about. When I rewatched the video, it jogged my memory, but I found it bland. It had not grabbed my attention. I worried that others may have tuned out the video like I did. It can be hard for us to remember what is important. That’s why we all have to get more involved. Here are some simple, direct steps you can take to combat sexual assault at your school.
GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS
Although it is a very personal and sensitive topic for me, I couldn’t think of a better outlet than to talk about sexual assault in a presentation for my journalism class. I hesitated to share my own experiences. When it came down to it, I knew that I would be contradicting everything I stood for if I left my experiences out. I am a part of the statistics. My experiences have impacted me. At the end of my presentation, there was slow applause that faded into silence. People started to cry but still sat there listening intently, as if I were still giving my presentation. Hands started to rise. People began to share their personal experiences and relate to each other, leaning on one another for support. One girl admitted that she hadn’t realized she had been sexually assaulted until my presentation. I had broken emotional barriers. Something that had burdened me for as long as I could remember was also weighing down others, and I had done something to help lift that weight. One student stood up and said, “At first I saw this presentation as very generic. I always knew that sexual assault was wrong, but never really absorbed it. When you started talking about your personal experiences, it hit me. You put it right in front of us, because when it is happening to someone we care about, we realize it is a problem that needs to be stopped.” v2//i2 ON THE RECORD
37
→ Define the action. People need to understand what sexual assault is and be able to identify if it is happening to anyone, including themselves. This also means knowing when you might be sexually harassing or assaulting someone else. I do not want anyone to have trouble recognizing the signs like I did. → Tell yourself these actions do not define you, they define the aggressor. I have blamed myself for a lot of what has happened to me. It took me a long time to realize that it wasn’t because I was wearing a certain outfit or that I did not call them out. The blame is on the assaulter, not you.
38
ON THE RECORD v2//i2
→ Go to an adult you trust for help. This adult can be a teacher, counselor, parent, etc. Do not be afraid to get the help that you deserve! No one should have to go through sexual assault alone. → Speak out! Change starts with dialogue. The more people that start speaking up, the more they will inspire others to do the same. In a speech responding to Trump’s scandals, former First Lady Michelle Obama talked about how it feels to be victimized. “It is cruel,” Obama said. “It’s frightening. And the truth is, it hurts. It hurts. It’s like that sick, sinking feeling you
get when you’re walking down the street minding your own business and some guy yells out vulgar words about your body. Or when you see that guy at work that stands just a little too close, stares a little too long, and makes you feel uncomfortable in your own skin.” You deserve better than the catcalls that you receive down the halls of your school. You deserve better than the feeling of someone’s hand on your body where it shouldn’t be. A gentle brush of someone trying to go unnoticed, or a more aggressive squeeze. When you turn around to call them out, they’re gone, or they deny that it ever happened. You deserve better than the student in your class who whispers inappropriate comments in your ear on their way to the pencil sharpener. The comments that leave you wondering if you should cry or if you should laugh, because it was no big deal, obviously ‘just a joke’. You deserve better than the words you hear behind you when a student drops a pen just they can watch you bend over to pick it up. The uncomfortable, watched feeling, as if you are doing something wrong. You deserve better than the seemingly simple pluck at your bra strap as if to call you out for wearing a necessity. The pluck that makes you feel unsure and scared of your changing body. You deserve better than the person who sits in the desk next to yours, inching closer to you. Their hand brushes your leg, slowly moving up where it should not be. You don’t want to make a scene and call them out, you don’t want to hear them deny it if you do. You deserve better than those “casual” incidents that leave a longlasting imprint on your mind. Your body is valuable. We need to work together to ensure that these crimes against our bodies don’t go unpunished. It is hard to speak up, but sometimes the hardest thing and the right thing are the same thing. If we work together, we can stop people from seeing sexual assault as an embarrassing topic. Soon it will be normal to speak up. •
v2//i2 ON THE RECORD
39
U
p until that point, Isaiah Woodson had been sitting with his eyes closed while discussion continued around him. His fingers tapped lightly on a bongo resting in his lap. He sat passively as Jalen Posey (16), the president of Central Magnet Career Academy’s Black Student Union (BSU), launched into another confident and unapologetic speech. “If you are not of African descent, you can still come, just be prepared to drink from the black water source,” Posey said. “This isn’t a diversity club: this is a Black Student Union. So come if you can drink the Flint, Michigan water.” As Woodson, a member of the University of Louisville’s (U of L) Association of Black Students, responded, his eyes remained closed, a slight smile perched on his lips. “You know what? I disagree, ‘cause humans originated from Africa. So we’re all from African descent,” Woodson said. Everyone in the circle turned to look at Woodson, eyes wide with surprise, but then Brandon Porter (17), a Butler Traditional High School student, said, “It’s true. Just a lot of people don’t want to believe that. All men, all humans come from one place: Africa.” Each spoke differently, some with a quiet passion and others with outright zeal, discussing how each handles their respective BSUs, clubs that educate, equip, and empower black students to make a difference in their community. A red, black and green banner – the colors of Africa – hung off the corner of a bookshelf, hinting at their purpose. Besides that, the room was sparsely decorated. Each of the six students represented a different school’s club: the high schools Louisville Male, Central, Butler, and duPont Manual, along with the University of Louisville. They talked about their respective BSUs, debating their feelings on diversity and discussing the range of people they saw within their own meetings. Every month, these six teenagers from different Louisville BSUs and others gather at a shared office building located near the Portland neighborhood as an umbrella organization, Citywide BSU, created last year to continue these discussions. 40
ON THE RECORD v2//i2
Black Student Union chapters unite schools and communities. words by SYLVIA GOODMAN & ZAKEYA BAKER // design by MADDY WILLIAMS
The school BSU leaders use the citywide BSU as a tool to help them organize cohesively, overcome obstacles as a group, and inspire others to start BSUs at schools that don’t have anything else in common. According to the Central BSU’s mission statement, BSUs attempt to further their understanding of their own identities while promoting cultural activities and educational enhancements. Ahmaad Edmund (18) inherited the part of the building used by Citywide BSU from his grandfather and shares the rest of it with the Afrikan Village Group of Louisville, who rents it to other organizations around the city.
Black people being “treated differently on the
basis of their skin color — that’s not a new thing. Donald Trump didn’t invent that. “ - Lydia Mason (18)
Among Louisville public schools, Waggener Traditional High School, Iroquois High School, Ballard High School, Manual, Male, and Central have BSUs. Half of these BSUs find their origins in Citywide BSU founded by Edmund, who also acts as the president of Male’s BSU, on Feb. 19, 2016. “I made a phone call to a local activist in the city, and I was just commending her on her efforts,” Edmund said. “We talked for a while and somehow or another, an idea came up that we should get all the BSUs in JCPS in one room, so I said let’s get the city-wide BSU together made up of all the different high schools, and this could be our headquarters.” Aside from working directly in schools, the students within the city-wide BSU are also responsible for holding events available to people from all over Louisville, targeting people of many different age groups. One program that the BSU participates in is called Books and Breakfast, an event that aims to help the entire black Louisville community through discussion and a complimentary breakfast.
“People need one, food, and two, knowledge,” Posey said. “The black community gets to leave with a full belly and a full backpack of books.” Citywide BSU also promotes other community gatherings, such as the Kwanzaa Celebration held at the Shawnee Cultural Community Center for five days between Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve. Various local organizations agreed to host the event including The Original Village, an independently owned restaurant, and Hood 2 Hood, an activist movement fighting violence in the Louisville area. “Everyone there embraced our rich culture by wearing dashikis, listening to the beating of the djembe drums, and accessing multiple black businesses,” said Kara Cunningham (17), vice president of Male’s BSU. Individual school BSUs also have a hand in organizing community events. At Manual, for example, the BSU participates in everything from political events to youth outreach programs. Last summer, the Manual BSU organized a protest event. “We had a Black Lives Matter vigil which became more like a march,” said Lydia Mason (18), president of Manual’s BSU. The vigil took place on July 17. Manual’s BSU was founded in 2014 as the first BSU in JCPS. Mason listed literary nights, poetry slams, and a mentoring program with the Boys and Girls Club in Newburg as some of their successes. Mason stressed that though many protests were sparked by President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the problems they address have existed long before he was sworn in. “Black people being treated differently on the basis of their skin color – that’s not a new thing. Donald Trump didn’t invent that,” Mason said. “This presidency just makes people who aren’t normally aware of it aware because it’s so blatant right now.” Mason and her student group also want their BSU to benefit the Manual community specifically. With 64 percent white students and 36 percent nonwhite students, Manual’s population roughly mirrors the Louisville area, which is 70 percent white and 30 percent nonwhite. However, only 13 percent
CHANTING FOR CHANGE: Shalonte Branham (19), president of Bellarmine’s BSU chapter, leads a chant at Books and Breakfast on Feb. 24. // photo by NYAH MATTISON
of Manual’s students are black, while 23 percent of the city’s population is black. Regardless of the breakdown, the existence of nonwhite populations does not necessarily make a school “diverse.” Mason said that the BSU “creates a more diverse environment.” “When I say diverse, I mean that it increases understanding across different backgrounds,” Mason said. “But the BSU has helped to make people aware of the issues that black people face and that black students face.” However, the biggest obstacle that many students face comes before organizing these large-scale events and their own school meetings. Rallying enough support to start a BSU in the first place is often difficult; some students hoping to start their own find it nearly impossible to recruit a faculty or staff member willing to sponsor the meetings. “Trying to get support – that’s the main thing,” Porter said. “It’s hard trying to find at least one person and have support from that person. Teachers won’t stay after because they have other things to do like grades, sports.” JCPS provides stipends for sponsors and coaches of some extracurricular activities such as sports, debate, and yearbook, but not for clubs like BSU. This may be one contributing factor to Porter’s trouble in finding the right
sponsor – a search that he says spanned over three months. Pleasure Ridge Park High School (PRP) BSU students say they had this very problem before finding its sponsor, Latisha Sutton, who teaches math and also sponsors PRP’s step team. “Trying to find a sponsor for the BSU was tremendously difficult considering there are only two black teachers at PRP,” said Jailen Leavell (17), founder of PRP’s BSU. Though white teachers can sponsor BSUs, students hoping to start the club say they prefer a teacher they see as identifying with the same struggles. But having a black sponsor isn’t a requirement, as evidenced by Manual’s sponsor James Miller, a white teacher in Manual’s Journalism & Communication magnet program. “I really enjoy sponsoring the BSU,” Miller said. “The students approached me a couple years ago and asked me to be the sponsor. I’m there for them. If they want me to be the sponsor, I’ll continue to be the sponsor, but if they want to get another, that’s not going to hurt my feelings. They should have a sponsor that’s going to do what they want and need.” While Miller and much of the Manual student population were receptive to the idea, not every stakeholder in district schools
was receptive towards a club aimed at a specific minority group. Leavell – who said he encountered skepticism from students, teachers, and parents – said the reason behind creating the PRP BSU was to educate his peers, make them think differently, and remove racial stigmas. “If they learn about the systemic issues that are keeping them oppressed, if they know about the school to prison pipeline, or even if they just learn their true history, preslavery, it could change their whole mindset on life,” Leavell said. Citywide BSU addressed this problem by organizing special showings of “13th,” a Netflix documentary about the U.S. prison industry and its impact on AfricanAmericans, during school BSU meetings across the city. The students say that discussion generated by this film is just one of the many ways Citywide BSU acts as a forum to compare and contrast ideas, to argue and agree, to shape all of the thoughts and plans mulling around in students’ heads. Without the support of their union members, they believe making change would be a far more daunting task. With it, according to Edmund, change is far more possible. That promise gave Edmund the courage he needed to start one at his own school. “I thought I was gonna have to go to the ER because it was just so many people,” Edmund said about the first meeting he organized at Male. “I was taken from the present to the future. I saw something that I had never seen before. And that was the solution.” Edmund can recall how he felt walking down the halls of Male as he went from class to class before he’d even had his first meeting. He remembered the history; he remembered that no black students had been admitted to Male until 1950. He prayed that he would get the support that he needed to get the BSU up and running. “And sure enough,” Edmund said, “we did.” • v2//i2 ON THE RECORD
41
Scene: A front porch in Louisville, 1968. Times are turbulent. A group of high school students – with limited resources and know-how – want to resist. Here’s what they did. words by AUDREY CHAMPELLI // design by SAM WEIBLE
42
ON THE RECORD v2//i2
“County FAIR is the voice of the muted student. The product of discontented, disillusioned, dissenting humans. Yes, humans. This publication is not just for the executives of FAIR or the involved member; it is for the average student, the quiet voice lost in the force-fed crap of the modern dehumanizing society.” — Mission statement printed in the County FAIR, 1969 estport high schoolers Eric Hansen and Tom Conley sat on Conley’s porch on a fall day in Louisville, tired of endless school rules. Tired of being told to cut their hair to “traditional” lengths. Tired of the draft looming over their heads. Tired of not being able to do anything about it. They wanted to have a say in what was going on – and they knew they weren’t the only ones. But it was 1968. They didn’t have cell phones or any way to communicate outside of face-to-face conversation and landline phone calls. They didn’t have Facebook to organize events or other social media for fast communication and planning. Neither were speaking, but they were both thinking about the countless cases they’d seen of boys not being allowed to grow out their hair past their ears and girls not being allowed to wear pants, because both apparently served as too much of a distraction to the school environment. Just a few days ago they had seen someone expelled because of his hair. The sounds of falling leaves and radio static filled the air as an all-too-familiar voice reported the daily updates on the Vietnam War. The death toll was growing higher and higher every day. All throughout high school they had sat silently through dress code
issues, war crimes and injustices, and other situations that, to them, didn’t seem fair. “We should have a group,” Hansen said, and he wasn’t talking about a radical organization of war protesters or even an active educational reform group – though both were similar to what FAIR would one day become. He was talking about a group of young men and women that would get together to discuss local, national, and global issues and propose steps towards progress. Conley considered this for a moment and agreed. By the time the radio reporter signed off for the day, the Freedom Association for Individual Reform (FAIR) had begun. As progressive-minded white kids in suburbia, they were distanced from movements closer to the city center, so they modeled FAIR after what little they knew about the larger student-run political organization, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), whose members organized thousands of acts of resistance across the country. There was no SDS chapter in Louisville, but they didn’t feel ready to step into leadership within a large organization. Inexperienced but eager, they were ready to define their own local movement. At its start, FAIR was merely an informal gathering to discuss dress code
regulations, politics, the Vietnam War, and anything else that was relevant. “Along with the big deal about the Vietnam War, it was about personal freedom of choice,” said Crews McCulloch, one of FAIR’s earliest members, describing what drew him and so many others into join. FAIR’s first meetings were held in members’ basements or backyards, but as FAIR grew, basements and backyards soon became too small. Many members belonged to some of the more progressive churches in Louisville, so when there were finally too many members to squeeze into one person’s basement, they started meeting in Unitarian church youth groups spaces, such as the Thomas Jefferson Unitarian Church on Brownsboro Road. Every few days after school, kids from Westport High School and a few from neighboring schools met in the carpeted church spaces to discuss issues they were facing in the community. It was around the time when more people were starting to show up to meetings that FAIR began semi-regularly printing a newspaper called County FAIR. County FAIR included both member and reader contributions of poems, editorials, and other short writings in response to injustices in their schools, communities, and country. With radical themes and language, the publication was the students’ attempt to parallel the underground press movement that was expanding from progressive cities as a way to spread counterculture completely independent from mainstream media. Publications such as the Los Angeles Free Press in California and the New England Free Press in Massachusetts were using print publication to voice their dissent for a variety of social issues ranging from the Vietnam War to different facets of the civil rights movement. McCulloch, Conley, and Hansen had noted that movements were using “underground” or small press publications to spread their ideas, so the created their own – County FAIR. McCulloch recalled distributing copies along Bardstown Road and at schools like Seneca, Atherton, and Eastern to help FAIR reach beyond the walls of Westport. Contributors to County FAIR fought for reform in a variety of areas, but one topic that came up again and again
was school dress codes, which students constantly ridiculed. “I find that not being clean-shaven is not degrading to my morals,” they wrote. “The administration has no more right to tell us how to dress than to tell us how to think.” As much tension as there is surrounding modern dress codes, the average dress code from the 1960s was much more restrictive. Specific differences primarily included restrictions on hair length for males, makeup for females, and footwear. In most cases, boys’ hair had to be worn at or above the ears and “extreme or unusual haircuts” such as flat tops, ducktails, and long hair were forbidden according to a 2012 Smithsonian magazine article about high school dress codes in the 1960s. Dress shoes with black, navy, or white socks were a common requirement and females were permitted to wear makeup “only in moderation.” Some styles, such as pants for females and the use of hair dye, were strictly prohibited in most schools. As high school activists who identified with the period’s counter-culture movement, they found dress code conventions in contrast with what they felt comfortable wearing – trends that faculty and administration considered extreme or unusual. “We were all labeled because of our dress or hair as either strange or weird or somebody to avoid,” McCulloch said of his peers and authority figures. As the national anti-war political movement escalated, FAIR members recall that dress codes became more heavily enforced. “I think they were using the dress code to target us,” said Jeff Higginbotham, a former Westport High School student who was a sophomore when Hansen and Conley were seniors. McCulloch noticed similar situations. “If you were putting out a red flag, they would find a way to do something about it,” McCulloch said. For that reason, Hansen decided to make a point to the administrators. On a day later that fall, he walked nervously through the front doors of Westport High School. On his way to his locker, he saw that people who usually gave him no notice were turning and staring. Taking in their shock and surprise, Hansen smiled and walked more confidently. v2//i2 ON THE RECORD
43
When he reached his locker, McCulloch, Conley, Higginbotham, and a few others were waiting there for him like usual. Their eyes grew wide and they laughed, skimming the top of his head with their hands, because in response to faculty complaints about the length of his hair, Hansen had completely shaved his head. Teachers had been telling him to get his hair cut for weeks, but after they saw how short it was, Hansen received a one day suspension. “It became a political statement rather than just a haircut,” Higginbotham said. Hansen eventually grew his hair back to its original length. Like Hansen, though, the national demonstrations struck a chord with other teenagers who viewed dress codes as a point of contention. “They felt that they should be able to have a say in their own education and how it was conducted which, coming from Catholic high school, was pretty novel,” said Larry Jouskey, one of Higginbotham’s friends from deSales High School who would sit in on FAIR meetings. And in the absence of modern day communication technology, FAIR’s print publication was one of the few ways to spread ideas to youth throughout Louisville. “I would say that there was one social media, and that was music,” Higginbotham said. “That was what was fomenting social unrest across ages and across the country.” Bob Dylan, with his song “The Times They are a-Changin,” was widely considered an iconic initiator of music counterculture, followed by other artists and groups such as the Beatles and Pink Floyd. This new type of music spread a variety of controversial ideas about civil rights and the Vietnam War, and Louisville teenagers were not immune. Throughout the city, high schoolers were coming into a new social and political consciousness. For many, FAIR was the perfect outlet. The organization continued to grow in numbers until there were too many high schoolers to fit in the church youth group spaces. They needed to find a new
as a large burly man walked up to them. He looked them in the eyes and spat on each of them from across the table. “You’re just a bunch of un-American Communists,” the man said as his family looked on from a distance. “You need to get out of here.” Rather than pack up and leave, the young men stood their ground, managing to recruit a few more students from around Louisville by the time they left. The next day, the boys were baffled when they saw an article in the CourierJournal that read, “A small group of teenagers was allowed to set up a counterintelligence area next to an Army display on Vietnam at The Mall on Shelbyville Road at 4 p.m. yesterday.” The article described the protest, including a letter from the Louisville Peace Council about FAIR’s efforts to turn teenagers into conscientious objectors to the draft. Higginbotham and the other members believe that the reporter’s incorrect usage of the term “counter-intelligence” to describe their group confused and alarmed people, planting doubt into the minds of parents. “That newspaper article – to me, what I remember of it – was written in a way to tell parents to not let your kids come and be part of FAIR anymore, because of all the bad things involved,” Higginbotham said. Some time that spring, protests became less frequent and people stopped showing up for rallies in the park. FAIR’s creators suspected that while the graduation of their seniors had some impact, the Courier-Journal article was the primary culprit of the group’s decline. Furthermore, they believed their interactions with Carl and Anne Braden took a toll. The Bradens were well-known left-wing activists who had been charged with sedition in the 1950s when they purchased a house on behalf of a black family in an all-white neighborhood, a move to help desegregate Louisville housing. Carl Braden had lent them his mimeograph machine to print County FAIR, and FAIR’s members believed that
“They felt that they should be able to have a say in their own education and how it was conducted which, coming from Catholic high school, was pretty novel.”
44
ON THE RECORD v2//i2
- Larry Jouskey meeting place quickly, so they chose Hogan’s Fountain Pavilion, a large gazebo in Cherokee Park that’s still used today for meetings and events. In this new, outdoor meeting space, the group was able to further develop into something larger and more vocal. Their meetings were growing into fullfledged rallies, because one idea that FAIR members constantly reinforced in their publication was the importance of protests. They wrote that even when protests don’t seem to have an effect, “people have been made to listen, and that is the main objective.” Now more than ever, students were standing up and demanding a voice in their education and vocally protesting the war. On Jan. 25, 1969, St. Matthews Mall was full with the usual crowd of people coming in after work and school. Representatives from the U.S. Air Force took center stage with a display that no one could miss in an attempt to drum up support and recruit young men. They flashed smiles and handed out pamphlets, unaware of the three longhaired boys approaching. Mall patrons avoided eye contact and the Air Force representatives looked on in shock as McCulloch, Hansen, and Higginbotham hastily set up their smaller counter-display. They were trying to convince the mall-goers that the war was senseless, or to at least provide a distraction from the Air Force’s display. Most of the people walking by maintained a respectful distance from the contrast of the two, pulling curious children away from the scene, but some were more outspoken in their disagreement. The young men stood with false confidence
general distrust for the Bradens was part of the reason the meetings stopped. All over the country, underground newspapers and magazines were ending, yet spin-offs were beginning. It was in this way that underground press kept citizens motivated through politically rocky times. County FAIR operated on a much smaller scale, but it had a similar effect on students in Louisville. When FAIR ended, spin-off publications and groups began, and though they often didn’t get very far off the ground, they kept a spirit of activism alive in their members and in Louisville. Time went on, and the friends graduated and said goodbye. Higginbotham, Hansen, and McCulloch continued protesting the war at their separate colleges; McCulloch was even thrown out of Morehead State University after reading anti-war literature at a school assembly. “The auditorium was packed, and I basically just read an article from Newsweek magazine stating that the Vietnam War was unwinnable and we should get out,” McCulloch said. “About three hours later I was sitting in a room with the dean of students and the dean of men, and they basically gave me a week to get out of town.” Now McCulloch is chair of the art department at Chatfield College where he uses his experience to encourage his own students. Higginbotham, now researching social interactions with the University of Buffalo, used his experience from FAIR’s rallies to oppose the 1970 Kent State University shootings and various elections during college and graduate school. Likewise, Hansen returned to his high school ideals with his participation in the 2011 protest movement, Occupy Wall Street, and in his work as a newspaper printer. To this day, all three FAIR members keep informed on current issues. Now, they use social media and the reach of the internet to combat issues, using lessons learned as teens to influence others and take action against racism, sexism, and homophobia. It’s not surprising that McCulloch offers this parting advice to teens grappling with issues of injustice. “Don’t be silent if you feel something is wrong,” McCulloch said. “Speak out. That’s important.” •
COUNTERINTUITIVE (above): FAIR members says a CourierJournal article may have put doubt in parents’ minds, inaccurately describing FAIR as “counterintelligence” after an anti-war demonstration on Jan. 25, 1969. “This was a large social movement and all of a sudden your kids in high school are going and meeting these people. It was pretty scary to parents,” Jeff Higginbotham said. ALL’S FAIR (left): In this issue of County FAIR published in 1969, FAIR members share their opinions on school dress codes and the draft. “The motivation, along with the big deal about dress codes and the war, was about personal freedom of choice,” Crews McCulloch said
v2//i2 ON THE RECORD
45
BEHIND THE
MIC Teens take the form of poetry out of the textbook and into the mic with Young Poets of Louisville. reporting by ALEX COX // personal account by KAELYN HARRIS // design by OLIVIA BROTZGE SPEAK YOUR MIND: Jasmine Frederick (16, New Albany High School) performs her poem “Long Live the Queens” about beauty standards at the Floetic Friday Youth Poetry slam, held at the Speed Art Museum on Nov. 18. “I typically write about… things that I want to see in the future,” she said. // photo by SARAH SCHMIDT
I
sat in the mostly empty Subway restaurant, reading my poems over and over again until they blurred together. My mom and my sisters split a sandwich, but I knew for sure that if I ate one bite of that teriyaki chicken on wheat, I’d see it again later at the poetry slam. I glanced out the window, then at my watch. 6:55. Not too early to check and see if the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft (KMAC) was open yet. I was so anxious to get there that I didn’t bother grabbing my umbrella from my sister, holding my notebook over my head as I ran next door. Rows of black chairs faced a single mic in front of a large, pop art-inspired photograph blown up on a wall tapestry. A museum employee straightened the last chair, then unlocked the doors. I was the first poet at the slam. I paced, glancing at my poems, then my watch, then the doors as other poets trailed in. Lance Newman, the slam coordinator, arrived around 7:15 in a whirlwind of energy. A word search tattoo peeked out from his left cardigan sleeve, made of 42 words that all meant something to him. Lance has found less than half of them, so far. 46
ON THE RECORD v2//i2
“Oh, hey, you came back!” he said to me, instantly setting my nerves at ease. I’d gone to the November slam as an audience member; by the end of that night, I hadn’t been able to breathe from the beauty of it all. “Yeah, I’m going to slam tonight,” I told him, awkwardly waving my poems. He brightened. “Well, good luck to you! You’ll do fine.” Lance bustled over to the sound system, turning up the hip hop music up until I could nearly feel the beat in my chest. I tried to focus on my poems and the music Lance had put on, but various Hamilton songs looped in my head instead as I tap danced in place to let out the energy electrifying my nerves. At 7:45, Lance gathered all six of the poets that had arrived at the back of the room. After a brief, dizzying explanation of the slam’s rules, he held out a wire basket. Folded slips of paper barely filled the bottom. I held my breath as the other poets chose their numbers; I didn’t bother praying as I picked mine. Maybe I should have. I was the first poet at the mic for round one. We returned to our seats as Lance officially opened the slam. I admit I don’t remember most of the opening remarks, or the guest poet
who performed. I do, however, distinctly remember the performance cues I’d written on my poems no longer having any meaning. “BREATHE” was just a collection of letters written in bright blue marker. I shuffled my poems as Lance took the stage again. “Please welcome your first poet, Kaelyn!” Lance walked off the stage, and I stood as gracefully as I could. I tilted the mic down and took a breath. “I was so crazy nervous.” Jasmine Frederick, a 16-year-old poet from New Albany, IN, said of her time at the mic that same night. “I would start shaking really bad. And at the time I was wearing heels, during my first one, so I was wobbling, and I could barely stand, but now the stage is like a second home to me.” Young Poets of Louisville (YPL) is Frederick’s outlet. “It’s a way of coping with everything that I go through as a female in this society,” Frederick said. My eyes fixated on Frederick who stood at the mic at the Nov. 18 YPL slam, the first one I attended. She surprised the audience in a way no one expected. She closed her eyes. Took a deep breath. And began to sing.
Sister, you know you’ve been on my mind, oh Sister, we’re two of a kind, so Sister, I’m keeping my eyes on you. The audience perked up – breath hitched – eyes riveted on the stage. With her voice raised and words emphasized, she proclaimed: Long live the queens! The words flowed from her mouth and the audience was captivated. With eyes halflidded and a smile on her face, she spoke of beauty and dreams that will one day be made true. She wanted to empower girls her age and younger to develop the confidence they deserve. Frederick said she uses her poetry as a vehicle to speak her mind and express her feelings on subjects she is passionate about. Frederick was one of six young poets YPL chose to send to Brave New Voices (BNV) last July. She worked with YPL coaches Brandon “B. Shatter” Harrison and Naiyana Williams, and performed at the slams and experienced the workshops for BNV. YPL partners with the BNV festival, which takes place in San Francisco and Oakland, Calif. every summer. Young poets from around the world come for the BNV four-day festival full of slams, workshops, showcases, and more poetryrelated opportunities. YPL takes six young poets to the festival based on their participation in the slams through a point system. Poets can earn these points by winning or simply participating in the monthly slams now held at KMAC. First place poet earns five points, second earns four, third earns three, and the rest earn one. The six poets at the end of the slam season with the most points are invited to attend BNV with the coaches and the executive director of YPL, Lance Newman. YPL was created by Mackenzie Berry, who was a 17-year-old duPont Manual High School student at the time. She said she envisioned it as an organization for young poets to use their voices, and to ultimately pay back Louisville as the city that raised her. A video of a poet named Kai Davis performing spoken-word poetry first
inspired Berry, who is now 19 and a freshman at the University of Wisconsin Madison, to compete in poetry slams. “What began as a selfish interest turned into the realization that Louisville needed this organization and this space for young people to speak their word,” Berry said. “Building something for the city that raised me became my vision.” In her work with the Louisville Youth Philanthropy Council, she was sent to Sweet Peaches, a recurring poetry slam on 18th & Muhammad Ali Blvd. She returned to Sweet Peaches and met Newman, who agreed to start hosting the YPL slams. Berry entrusted YPL to him once she left for college. Though it was started by a high school student, YPL attracts poets of all ages. McKenna Middendorf, a 14-year-old eighth grader at Meredith-Dunn School, was one of the youngest performers of the night. She confidently walked up to the stage, her curly ponytail bouncing with every step. It was the eighth grader’s first time at the poetry slam, which she’d learned about during a group trip to KMAC. “I happened just to turn around to see this stuff laying out on the counter and I picked up a poetry slam flyer,” Middendorf said. After looking up YPL on Facebook, Middendorf decided she wanted to perform. I found the event not only a time to explore an art form and get to know the poetry community in Louisville, but also a place to freely express thoughts and emotions without judgment. Newman’s goal is “to create young poets, very simply.” Youth are given a chance to share their work in a way that was difficult to find in Louisville before YPL was created. In giving them a platform to grow as artists, YPL acts as a place for emotional and personal growth that cannot easily be found in daily life. The nurturing environment of the slams have drawn a variety of Louisville youth. Poets address topics like anxiety, beauty standards, racism, religion, and personal identity, often delivering their words with conviction and occasionally tempered with humor. Most, if not all, of the poems are based on personal experiences. I had kept that in mind. When it was my turn, I stood at the mic and remembered to
breathe. Another poet nodded to me, almost imperceptibly, from the back of the audience and my heart settled back into my chest. One shuffle of my pages later, I was taking a breath, relaxing my muscles, and launching into the most personal poem of the three I’d written for the slam. I remembered how I’d practiced the poem, matching the rhythm of the words to my stride as I walked from class to class. Mackenzie Berry’s advice echoed in my ears: “Make sure the poem is in your body first.” I felt this poem in my bones and in the air as I performed, hands shaking less as I forged a connection with the audience. In an age of insecurities I cannot afford Larger pockets for larger paychecks When I finished, I tried to compose myself as I walked back to my seat, where I promptly started trembling all over. My teeth chattered as Newman read off the scores from the judges, the audience booing the judges for my lowest score and cheering loudly for my highest score, as per tradition. I was shaking, but I had done it. I was still shaking when the poetry slam officially ended. The slam winner had packed some powerful points with her poetry. I pulled a different slammer aside for an interview, congratulating her on her performance. Thirteen-year-old Princess Burney, a Farnsley Middle School eighth grader, had slammed for the first time that night too – and had been absolutely amazing. I’d felt instantly relieved that I wasn’t the only first-timer there. Newman pulled me into a hug. “You did great!” he told me. “You had a little wordplay with that second poem. Keep doing that.” I smiled and promised I’d continue writing. We said our goodbyes and I gathered my family. The streetlamps glowed softly as we made our way to the parking garage. Creative energy buzzed in my bones. I wanted to slam again. • v2//i2 ON THE RECORD
47
S TA R T SOMETHING
Twenty years ago we started something: a digital agency unlike anything else in Louisville. Today, we continue to break through barriers and forge forward. We create meaningful strategies for our clients through design and technology. We have been here since the beginning and we know what to aim for next.
VIA STUDIO Digital Craftsmen & Communicators
B RACE F OR IMPAC T.
viastudio.com