NOT EVERYTHING THAT IS FACED CAN BE CHANGED, BUT NOTHING CAN BE CHANGED UNTIL IT IS FACED. JAMES BALDWIN Students address inclusion and share their hopes. See page 26
L I F T E V E RY VO I C E Whether as a way to boost morale, convey vital information or celebrate, singing is a deeply rooted African American tradition, giving voice to a community silenced in our history. On June 19, UCF’s Gospel and Cultural Choir, including president Hector Garcia and member Jessica Pugh (pictured here), lent their voices to the university’s inaugural Juneteenth Celebration, which was organized by students. The event commemorates the official end of slavery in the United States in 1865 — more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation declared that “all persons held as slaves ... shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.”
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Inbox
PEGASUS
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AVP FOR COMMUNICATIONS AND MARKETING Patrick Burt ’08MA
THANK YOU FOR THE SUMMER 2020 ISSUE OF Pegasus. It was perfect in every way. In both poignant and heartbreaking stories, it truly captured the shocking and uncharted times we are in that will surely be in future history books. Yet by highlighting celebrated accomplishments of former and current students and describing the immediate ability of the UCF family to come together to accommodate the many challenges being faced, including the ability to transition to remote learning, it was also very hopeful. Indeed, “To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven.”
» GLORIA GROOME ’81
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Laura J. Cole
University of Central Florida July 6, 2020
Monique Belgard Posner Wow! Just got this! I’m very impressed with the quality and the amount of current content they were able to produce during this difficult time. Kudos to the Pegasus staff. I’m definitely keeping this for my freshman! She will be able to look back one day and remember these crazy times. #greatkeepsake
ARE YOU AWARE THAT YOU ARE QUOTING THE Bible (“Still Turning,” Summer 2020)? Look for blowback from your woke constituents (if they figure it out, which they likely will not). The Byrds and Pete Seeger were not woke enough to avoid such sources. Have a nice day.
Opinions expressed in Pegasus are not necessarily those shared by the University of Central Florida.
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DESIGNERS Mario Carrillo Janeza Dino
WEB Jim Barnes RJ Bruneel ’97 Jo (Greybill) Dickson ’11 Kim Spencer ’11 Cadie Stockman Roger Wolf ’07MFA CONTRIBUTORS Matt Chase Lisa Haney Don Harrell Tricia Hinds ’15 Robert Stephens
» PAMELA (STEVENS) RHODES ’76
106 Likes 36 Comments
Cary Lopez Rojas We got ours as well! Loved it. Definitely keeping this for memories. Karen Oakley Hodgson I couldn’t agree more. I read it cover to cover. I was very impressed! Heather Keith Pressler The article about UCF’s president was so insightful. Who knew that he was a champion billiards player? Melissa Woolm Tomasso The first couple of pages have quotes listed. Hits you like a ton of bricks but so impressed with the honesty. It is refreshing to see open journalism, even if it is tough to hear. I loved this edition. Rock on UCF
Email:
ART DIRECTOR Steve Webb
PRODUCTION MANAGER Sandy Pouliot
OVERALL, I LIKE THE MAGAZINE, BUT I TAKE GREAT exception to Deborah Beidel saying that “The luckiest among us stay in our houses…” (“Trauma & Resilience,” Summer 2020). I don’t enjoy being a prisoner [in my home]. I can’t go shopping, to eat out or party. By virtue of my age alone, I am in a high-risk group. … I don’t consider it “lucky” to need to take every precaution possible to keep from catching this. I do not feel “lucky” to be in the highest risk category. I, too, am traumatized.
Pegasus is published by UCF Marketing in partnership with the UCF Foundation, Inc. and UCF Alumni.
STAFF WRITERS Bree (Adamson) Watson ’04 Nicole Dudenhoefer ’17 Gene Kruckemyer ’73 Jenna Marina Lee
MULTIMEDIA Thomas Bell ’08 Kim Go ’20 Jasmine Kettenacker Nick Leyva ’15
Editor’s Response: Yes, we are aware that the song is originally from Ecclesiastes 3:1-8. It’s one reason why we pushed to keep the lyrics as-is, rather than censor language that some might find upsetting.
ABOUT THE COVER: “I wanted to capture the spirited energy of the Black community and the collective activism of our nation,” says Tricia Hinds ’15, an art graduate who designed this issue’s covers. “The materials used reveal something raw, painful and chaotic. Yet Baldwin’s quote captures an immense light, deep hope, and a call for progress.”
ASSISTANT CREATIVE DIRECTOR Lauren (Haar) Waters ’06
COPY EDITOR Peg Martin
» PETER BRENNAN ’75
Editor’s Response: Certainly when editing the piece, we did not mean to downplay what you or anyone else is going through. We hope you have discovered new ways to find joy and are taking care of yourself.
CREATIVE DIRECTOR Ron Boucher ’92
pegasus@ucf.edu
Mail: UCF Marketing P.O. Box 160090 Orlando, FL 32816-0090 Phone: 407.823.2621
©2020 University of Central Florida. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. Pegasus is a registered trademark of UCF Alumni.
UCF CONTENT ADVISORY BOARD Edwanna Andrews ’99 ’05MA ’17PhD Sonia Arellano Keenan Ball ’19 Rick Brunson ’84 S. Kent Butler Reshawna Chapple Ruth Colombe ’12 Zoe Colon Shayla (Hogan) Cannady ’07 Amy Maciel Harshita Panuganty Linda Rosa-Lugo Tiffany Sanders ’99 Colton Tapoler ’12 ’17EdD Natalia Toro ’18 Stephanie Wheeler
INBOX SUBMISSIONS Emails to the editor should be sent with the writer’s name, graduation year, address and daytime phone number to pegasus@ucf.edu. Letters may be edited for length and clarity, and may be published in any medium. Due to volume, we regret that we cannot reply to every letter.
MOVED RECENTLY? NEED TO UPDATE YOUR INFO? Update your contact information: ucfalumni.com/contactupdates
Contents 6 In Focus 10 Briefs 12 Of History and Hope 13 The Feed 14 Fostering Inclusivity 16 Celebrating Representation 18 Fair Play 19 The Business of Hip-Hop 20 The Truth Laid Bare 24 The Right to Vote? 26 We Are UCF 32 Is Cancel Culture Effective? 36 Protector of the Past 38 Class Notes 42 Weddings & Births 46 Why I Celebrate My Heritage
ORLANDO PRIDE UCF lit up the Dr. Phillips Academic Commons on the downtown campus in pride colors on June 12 in remembrance of the 49 people — including student Juan Ramon Guerrero and alumnus Christopher Andrew “Drew” Leinonen ’07 ’09MS — who were killed at Pulse in 2016.
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In Focus A MORE PERFECT UNION The long-awaited renovation of the Student Union finished its final phase just in time to welcome students back to campus in August. An additional 33,000 square feet were added to the building, which originally opened in 1997. Although the atrium remains unchanged — the beloved UCF seal is still very much intact — the building now offers expanded dining options, including a full-service Starbucks on the second floor and an additional 350 seating options. The Reflection Room, an inclusive meditation and prayer room, is open to individuals of all faiths on the first floor. The three-year, $23 million project also saw the addition of two gender-neutral bathrooms and the university’s first dedicated space for Student Government senate chambers for students and faculty, which includes a permanent electronic voting system as well as state-of-the-art projection and sound systems. The Student Union has modified operations and policies during the pandemic to maintain the health and well-being of the university community and visitors, but still remains committed to its reputation as the “heart of campus.”
“The Student Union is a special place for all Knights, and this expansion allows us to offer many new services while still fostering the sense of community that we’ve always been known for.” — Rick Falco ’98 ’01MA, director of the Student Union
To view more photos, visit ucf.edu/pegasus.
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In Focus A NEW BEGINNING While some elements of campus life have changed drastically this fall, others remain the same. The semester kicked off in early August as usual when 6,000 students moved into residence halls on the main campus. Though there are fewer on-campus residents, more than 80 people from across campus collaborated to optimize the move-in process and ensure the well-being and health of all involved. Additionally, in-person class sizes have become smaller while the caliber of students continues to increase. The Class of 2024 boasts an average GPA of 4.18, the strongest in university history.
“This whole experience has shown that when we all come together to achieve a task of this magnitude, amazing things can happen.” — April Konvalinka, executive director of housing and residence life
$120,445
Amount raised for the Student Emergency Fund since March, with $33,445 from sales of Rock ’Em Sock’s UCF-branded face coverings as of September 30
30,000+
UCF-branded face coverings distributed to students, faculty and staff
1322
Average SAT score of UCF’s incoming freshman class
450
Students who attended a physically distanced Knighting ceremony, a tradition officially inducting new students to UCF, on Memory Mall
40
Hours of hand-washing offered at portable sinks sponsored by UCF’s Wellness & Health Promotion Services on the main and downtown campuses during the first two weeks of the fall semester
19
Average minutes for students to check into their residence halls, which included COVID testing
To learn more and view more photos, visit ucf.edu/pegasus.
U C F. E D U / P E G A S U S | 9
Briefs RESEARCH
LEADING IN AI
UCF’s Center for Research in Computer Vision won a worldwide competition to improve computer vision by creating technology that can automatically track behavior in long security videos.
“Video activity recognition in unconstrained domain is a very important problem that has applications in self-driving cars, video surveillance and monitoring, human-computer interface and video search.” — Mubarak Shah, UCF trustee chair, professor of computer science and Center director, who also recently secured a $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense to advance his cutting-edge work in artificial intelligence
OPTIMIZING ENERGY Debashis Chanda, an associate professor in UCF’s NanoScience Technology Center, has earned a $2.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense to continue his research over the next five years to conceal and manipulate the energy that materials emit. The work has implications in creating nighttime camouflage that conceals objects from infrared vision, as well as in methods for anticounterfeiting, tagging and energy management.
ENHANCING DISINFECTANTS
Current disinfectant products take minutes to fully sanitize surfaces, which isn’t practical for high-contact areas during the pandemic. To help solve this problem, UCF researchers are developing a faster disinfectant spray and have received a National Science Foundation grant of more than $250,000 to advance the project.
“We are creating a rapid-acting disinfectant spray that will disinfect faster than current disinfectants and that leaves behind a temporary, yet continually, disinfecting film post application.” — Christina Drake ’07PhD, a materials science engineer and owner of Orlando-based Kismet Technologies
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$204.5
MILLION
The record-setting amount of research funding UCF secured during the 2020 fiscal year — an increase of $12.4 million from last year and 40 percent from 2016, indicating increased faculty and enhanced efficiency changes have helped despite challenges such as the pandemic and government shutdowns.
“That’s what it is all about — giving patients a fighting chance of cancer survival.” — Alicja Copik, associate professor of biomedical sciences, on her discovery to make natural killer cells even more powerful — by stimulating them with nanoparticles that multiply them and heighten their killing ability — and then using the cells to fight cancer. Her technology was recently licensed by Sanofi with the hope of finding new blood-cancer treatments.
BUILDING COMMUNITY One year after opening, UCF Downtown received a Golden Brick Award of Excellence from the Downtown Orlando Partnership. The annual awards recognize projects that positively impact downtown Orlando through extraordinary achievements and broad-reaching contributions. The shared campus with Valencia College serves more than 7,000 students while fostering collaboration with neighbors.
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#
1
#
Most innovative school in the nation (U.S. News & World Report)
Supplier of graduates to the aerospace and defense agencies and No. 2 preferred supplier in the nation (Aviation Week Network)
2
5
#
BOLSTERING NATIONAL SECURITY
5
Top institution for awarding bachelor’s degrees to Hispanic students and No. 22 for master’s degrees in the nation (Hispanic Outlook on Education)
6
#
RESPONDING TO COVID-19
2020 National Science Foundation CAREER grants recipients in the nation
TOP
UCF has launched 11 new graduate certificates and tracks that aim to provide useful tools when facing challenges related to the pandemic. These areas span cyber risk management, data analytics, financial technology, engineering, healthcare and more.
11
30
25 40 #
President Alexander N. Cartwright and first lady Melinda K. Cartwright have pledged $250,000 to support student success. Their donation will go toward an emergency relief fund for students, scholarships for first-generation students, research in STEM fields, the humanities, athletics and a fund to be used for the university’s greatest needs.
Transportation science and technology program in the nation (ShanghaiRanking)
#
A new partnership between the State University System of Florida, the Florida Defense Alliance and the National Security Innovation Network will give students at UCF and 11 other Florida public state universities real-world opportunities to develop innovative solutions to national security challenges and prepare them for careers in the defense industry.
SUPPORTING STUDENTS
#
Hospitality and tourism programs in the world and No. 1 in the nation (ShanghaiRanking)
Consecutive semesters studentathletes have earned a 3.0 GPA or better
62
47
#
#
University for social mobility in the nation (U.S. News & World Report)
Fulbright award recipients for 2020, setting a new record for UCF
Cybersecurity programs in the nation (cyberdegreesedu.org) Best public education institution (Washington Monthly)
Institution with least debt for students in the nation (U.S. News & World Report)
TOP
300
Employer for women in the U C F. E D U / P E G Anation S U S | (Forbes) 11
Artifact
OF HISTORY AND HOPE Artwork commissioned for UCF Downtown pays homage to Parramore’s rich heritage. BY JENNA MARINA LEE
U
CF student Sasha Mills has lived her entire life in Parramore. When she finally got to see the finished 16½ -by-11-foot art glass window that was made specifically for the UCF Downtown campus located in the heart of her neighborhood, a big smile spread across her face. “Parramore has shaped me into who I am,” says Mills, who is studying human communication at the downtown campus. “To know that we come from such a rich history — and that it’s displayed for everyone to see — makes me proud.” Mills was one of several community members who offered stories, neighborhood tours and input for artist Nancy Gutkin O’Neil to
craft the mural that was installed in June. “There were so many stories, and I sensed a real resilience from the people who grew up in Parramore,” says O’Neil. “It was an honor to try to do a piece of art that in some way told part of that story.” Here a few highlights featured in the mural: COLLECTIVE MEMORIES O’Neil titled the artwork, If We Can Truly Remember, They Will Not Forget, a line selected from Miller Williams’ poem Of History and Hope. “I knew I wanted the title to be about memory, hope and people’s dreams,” says O’Neil. “This is about remembering from the heart, not just the mind, and passing things on to another generation.”
LOCAL BUSINESSES While researching Parramore, O’Neil found the 1960 business directory of the Orlando Negro Chamber of Commerce, which she says demonstrates the residents’ fortitude to build a thriving community despite the tremendous obstacles they faced in a racist society. “Every beauty salon, taxicab stand, restaurant, insurance company, social organization, drug store, day care — everything you could think of that made up a world — and it’s almost all gone,” she says. LIFE IN PARRAMORE In 2008, members of the Parramore Kidz Zone, a youth development program, wrote a spoken word poem titled, I Come from Parramore, which was turned into a video. Excerpts from the poem are highlighted in the artwork, including a line that Mills wrote while in high school: “I come from a place called the bottom, so I have no other destination but the top.” RACIAL STRIFE Established in 1948 by Ed and Eileen Goff, Goff’s Drive In is one of Orlando’s oldest businesses. The small ice cream stand known for its banana splits and cones is located near Camping World Stadium on South Orange Blossom Trail. According to a 2003 Orlando Sentinel article, the stand was bombed on November 2, 1951, after the Goffs served Black and white customers at the same counter. PAST AND FUTURE You can’t talk about Parramore without mentioning Jones High School. Archival photos of the 1931 graduating class, students greeting Martin Luther King Jr. in Orlando, and the band’s trip to the 1964 New York World’s Fair are all prominently featured. “I wish I could take a time machine to go back and experience what it was like,” says Mills, a Jones graduate. “I’m excited for the day when I can take kids from the neighborhood to go see the window and hear them ask, ‘What is this?’ and tell them, ‘This is our history.’ ”
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Find more
@ucf.edu/news
The Feed @UCF
@University of Central Florida
Healthcare Honor
UCF’s nursing simulation program recently received accreditation from the Society of Simulation in Healthcare, the largest accrediting body of its kind in the world. bit.ly/ucfhealthcare-honor
Promoting Pronouns
Why respecting how people identify is a common decency that everyone should follow. bit.ly/ucf-promotingpronouns
Cyber Success
UCF’s cybersecurity program is ranked among the top 30 in the nation, highlighting the university’s pipeline of talent and commitment to research in this area. bit.ly/ucf-cyber-success
Drug Detector Greater Alliance
Human rights activist and UCF Professor Richard Lapchick discusses how to be a better ally against racism. bit.ly/ucf-greater-alliance
UCF researchers have developed a method that rapidly and remotely detects the powerful drug fentanyl — while also learning to detect any previously unknown derivatives. bit.ly/ucf-drug-detector
WHAT’S TRENDING ON... UCF TODAY
Deep Discussion
Interim Chief Equity, Inclusion and Diversity Officer S. Kent Butler shares insight on race-related issues at UCF and across the nation. bit.ly/ucf-deep-discussion
Active Entrepreneur A new UCF study suggests temporary ADHD-like tendencies generated by a lack of sleep help spur entrepreneurial activity. bit.ly/ucf-activeentrepreneur
Powerful Protests
Since America’s beginning, people have used protests to make their voices heard and advocate for change. Here are seven historic examples. bit.ly/ucf-powerful-protests
Sept 4 @ItsAmandaBooz It’s national
FACEBOOK University of Central Florida August 2, 2020
#CollegeColorsDay
Loida Guillén Strong kept a secret from her mother for three years —
so I had to bring
she was pursuing a doctoral degree from the UCF College of Nursing.
my favorite crewneck that I’ve had since undergrad! @UCF #UCFPride #UCFKnights #BlackandGOLD Sept 3 @itsvonniewithav Just submitted my application to @UCF. It’s been one of my dream schools since I was a teenager. Now at nearly 36 I’m finally making it become a reality. 718 reactions
Aug 1 @AmandaMSchaffer August 1999. Me, 18, coming to UCF to chase the moon & find myself. Thanks for filling my bucket to overflowing with knowledge, laughter, life, amazing football & love @UCF. I live each day grateful to be a UCF Knight. Thank you for giving me the moon and then some. #ucf
Chantal Roaché Tears all over the place! you all the best!
74 comments 167 shares
Congratulations and I wish
Dianne Bumbray This touched my core. What a heartwarming story. I feel her joy. I’m a single parent, too; one of which is also a UCF grad. Blessings to her and her family. #goknights Marilou C. Ordinario Congratulations to both of you ... to an awesome daughter and a wonderful mother! What a beautiful story! Thanks for sharing!
U C F. E D U / P E G A S U S | 1 3
WE MUST DO BETTER
A
t UCF, we have long been proud of our students’ diversity. It is one of the qualities that continues to draw people to our university. Since arriving at UCF in the spring, I have met and heard from many people, listening to stories and aspirations that our campus’ diversity is not just celebrated, but that inclusive excellence must be an integral part of our actions and plans for the future. There has never been a more important time for us to tackle these issues together, with long-standing inequities and discrimination made more visible by the pandemic and the recent horrific violence further illuminating the systemic racism plaguing our society and impacting so many. As a country and a university, we must do better. And that will only happen when we lead with compassion and come together to work toward solutions. I am committed to ensuring that all UCF students feel valued and have the resources needed to succeed and graduate.
Alexander N. Cartwright President
CULTIVATING A CULTURE OF INCLUSIVE EXCELLENCE
No. 4
For most minority graduates in the nation, according to Diverse: Issues in Higher Education
31.7%
F
or the sixth time, UCF was named among the 2020 Higher Education Excellence in Diversity Award recipients by Insight Into Diversity magazine, which recognizes U.S. colleges and universities that demonstrate an outstanding commitment to diversity and inclusion. UCF was selected along with 90 other colleges because of the university’s commitment to inclusive student recruitment, retention and completion; programming, initiatives and outreach; and hiring practices. ETHNICITY OF STUDENTS
UCF undergraduates who are Pell Granteligible
Alaska Native
6.4% Asian 10.36% Black 27.51% Hispanic/Latino
21.7%
UCF undergraduates who are the first in their family to attend college All UCF numbers are based on early Fall 2020 data.
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0.13% American Indian/
4.32% International 3.91%
Multiracial
0.15% Native Hawaiian/ other Pacific Islander
0.98% Not specified 46.24% White
PEGASUS
LISTENING TO THE UCF COMMUNITY
27.5%
ENROLLMENT OF HISPANIC UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS
T
his spring, UCF conducted a campus climate survey to get a better understanding of how the community feels about diversity and inclusion on campus. While only 2 percent of students responded, here is what they had to say.
SERVING HISPANIC STUDENTS
T
he U.S. Department of Education designated UCF a Hispanic-Serving Institution in 2019, after having exceeded a 25 percent enrollment of Hispanic undergraduate students.
IMPROVING RETENTION RATES
92.3% All first-year students
92.5%
Students who are satisfied with the quality of education
Students who are satisfied with UCF faculty
“Tsense here is a great of belonging. 44%
Hispanic first-year students
92%
29%
on diversity.
Multiracial first-year students
CLOSING THE GRADUATION GAP At UCF
In the U.S.*
1%
24%
1%
I don’t know
Disagree
23%
”
“Otoourmuch school puts emphasis
92.6%
Percentage point difference between Hispanic graduates and their white counterparts
78%
Agree
Black first-year students
Percentage point difference between Black graduates and their white counterparts
80%
Strongly Agree
22%
”
Strongly Disagree
57%
10%
* Based on data from the National Center for Education Statistics
CONTINUING TO IMPROVE
R
anging from implementing new hiring practices and advisory boards to a new universitywide action plan, strategic investments in diversity and inclusion initiatives are making more resources available. 1 This summer, President Cartwright announced that UCF was reallocating part of each college and division’s budget to create a new Strategic Investment Fund, a portion of which will help bolster inclusive excellence throughout the university. 2 UCF’s chief equity, inclusion and diversity officer position will be elevated to a vice president position. 3 Leaders from human resources, institutional equity and faculty excellence are working to increase best practices among job searches, including creating extensive training on making recruitment more inclusive and requiring specific training for everyone who serves on a search committee. 4 The university has created or is in the process of creating several advisory boards, including the President’s Student Advisory Council, which includes 20 student representatives to advise on building a more inclusive culture at UCF; the Chief Diversity, Inclusion and Equity’s Student Advisory Council, for which the criteria is currently being developed; the uKnighted Nation Committee, which includes a 30-member group charged with proposing and implementing social and racial justice programming for UCF Athletics; and the UCF Content Advisory Board, which includes 15 faculty, staff, students and alumni who provide feedback on and ideas for UCF Today, Pegasus, the university’s main social media channels and marketing materials. (See page 4 for a full list of participants.) 5 From Lavender Graduation to an annual diversity conference, UCF prioritizes supporting diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. To learn how you can contribute, contact Director of Advancement Renzo Martorella at Renzo.Martorella@ucf.edu or 754.422.9133.
“UCF is at the forefront of diversity and inclusion in higher education, but we need to continue broadening our efforts. … We are looking to do more and recognize that we will not be rewarded for complacency.” — S. Kent Butler, interim chief equity, inclusion and diversity officer
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Geraldine Charles
Biomedical sciences major and women’s and gender studies minor Alpha Xi Chapter of Chi Upsilon Sigma National Latin Sorority Inc. member
Linda Rosa-Lugo
Associate dean of faculty excellence, graduate and global affairs Founder and director of UCF Listening Center at the UCF Communication Disorders Clinic Associate professor of communication sciences and disorders
The first time I saw West Side Story was the first time I saw someone on the silver screen who looked like me. I am a Puerto Rican baby boomer who grew up in Soundview, a housing project in the Bronx, New York.
Inspired by Latinx arts and music, five Knights discuss their cultural pride and the importance of representation. BY NICOLE DUDENHOEFER ’17
In 1968, Hispanic Heritage Week launched a cultural celebration that would expand 20 years later into Hispanic Heritage Month, which recognizes the contributions and influence of Hispanic Americans to the history, culture and achievements of the United States. And while the occasion marks an especially important time to positively promote Latinx individuals and communities, the significance of representation is timeless and has the ability to shape lives across generations. From books and music to TV shows and movies, five Knights share the people and works that inspired them to celebrate their identities, as well as their cultural pride.
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Every summer my brother and I went to Puerto Rico to visit my grandparents, my dad, sister and brother, and our extended family on both sides. We enjoyed the beauty of our island, but I never had any Puerto Rican role models. Then I saw Rita Moreno. Her character, Anita, brought our rich culture to life through singing, salsa dancing and her passion for family. In our neighborhood, I had been exposed to all those wonderful things by my mother — a dancer — and by our extended family. West Side Story also told the story of the rivalry between two teenage street gangs, the Jets and the Sharks. To this day, their conflict reminds me of how much we have struggled. We still have a long way to go for people to see us, Puerto Ricans, as American citizens or the beauty of our diverse skin colors, the richness of our language and culture, or our contributions [to society].
I’m Afro-Latinx, but it’s not because my Latinx side is rooted in African descent. It’s because I’m biracial: Nicaraguan and Haitian. Growing up in the Latinx community, I didn’t encounter very many people who looked like me, and sometimes it was hard for me to feel accepted because of my darker complexion and my hair. I was 7 or 8 when I saw the video for Celia Cruz’s “La Negra Tiene Tumbao” (“The Black Woman Has Style”). Just seeing her want and need to celebrate being a Latinx, dark-skinned woman was a very positive influence for me. We need to start having these conversations and celebrating the different hues and shades within the Latinx community. I would like to see cultures across the world embrace being Black and brown as a beautiful thing, so little boys and little girls can grow up feeling accepted and loved and stand proud. I have been blessed to be immersed in different cultures. And being Latinx and Haitian, I’ve been able to see the world in a lot of different ways. It’s shown me that even though all of our struggles are different, we’re often struggling in the same ways.
PEGASUS
Sabrina La Rosa
Student Government president Political science major with minors in public administration and Spanish
One of my favorite books is The Red Umbrella, which is about the Operation Peter Pan flights in the ’60s when 14,000 children flew from Cuba to Miami and then moved to places across the United States to escape Fidel Castro’s rise to power.
Sebastian Leon ’18
Nanotechnology graduate student Biomedical sciences graduate
When I think about Colombian influential figures, musicians instantly come to mind, and one of my favorites is Carlos Vives. He is really known as the voice of Colombians. We listened to him a lot when we first moved to the United States and listening to him reminds me of being around family. I was born in Bogota, Colombia, and my immediate family moved to Florida when I was 4, so my sister and I could have better opportunities.
Justin Andrade ’10
Assistant director of programming for the Office of Student Involvement President of the Pride Faculty and Staff Association Psychology graduate
My father was born in Los Angeles and moved back and forth between the U.S. and Colombia throughout his life, so he was pretty well adjusted. Moving to the U.S. was very different for my mom. In Colombia, she had degrees, her own business and was a professor in dentistry, but coming to the United States those accomplishments weren’t recognized, so it was a huge setback. It was a culture shock to start a new life without having the big support system of our extended family back in Colombia. Without my parents’ sacrifices, I wouldn’t have the privilege of earning my master’s right now, and their perseverance helps me to keep working toward my goals.
I grew up with influences from Cuba, Mexico, Colombia and Panama, but I really identify as Cuban and Colombian/Panamanian. When I was in fifth grade I started watching ¿Qué Pasa, U.S.A.?, which chronicled a Cuban family coming to Miami and experiencing American culture. It was actually the first American bilingual sitcom and the first time I got to really see myself on TV and hear things my abuela or abuelo would say. I related a lot to the daughter, Carmen, who was always kind of torn between wanting to understand American culture, but her family was always like, “No, you’re Cuban. You have to remember that you’re Cuban.” In college, I did a lot of identity exploration and I was trying to understand how I fit into this American makeup of what being Latinx is or what being American looks like. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that I don’t need to compromise any of my identities to fit into any kind of mold of what it means to be American, Latinx, or even Latinx and gay. For me, it’s really important that I talk about both, and that they’re not exclusive — they’re intersected — because I’m just as proud of being gay as I am of being Cuban, Mexican and Colombian/ Panamanian.
I get chills just thinking about it because these are real stories that happened to people — this story happened to the author’s grandmother — and it beautifully embodies the struggles and perseverance of the Cuban people. My family left Cuba about 60 years ago, and they lost everything. It’s taught me a lot about appreciating what you have and going for what you want, which is part of why I ran for student body president. … Vice President Stephanie Blanco and I didn’t set out to be the first all-female and all-Latina ticket — we didn’t really have anyone to look up to, but we didn’t let that stop us. It’s a huge honor to know that Latinas and other women can see us and know they can do it too. Despite the hardships that many Cubans have faced, Cubans are known to be fun, laughing, happy people with an immense pride in their culture. The vibrancy and beauty that Miami is known for is largely influenced by the many Cubans who came there to rebuild. I think that’s a testament to the strength and positivity that Cubans carry with them, no matter where they are.
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For more than 30 years, the Racial and Gender Report Card, produced at UCF, has held sports organizations accountable for their hiring practices. BY JENNA MARINA LEE
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thletes have a long history as advocates for equality and social justice. John Carlos and Tommie Smith raised their fists for Black rights on the victory podium at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. Muhammad Ali refused to serve during the Vietnam War. The U.S. Women’s Soccer National Team demanded equal pay. Colin Kaepernick kneeled in protest of racial inequality. When the Milwaukee Bucks forfeited Game 5 of their Eastern Conference playoff series with the Orlando Magic on August 26 in protest of the shooting of Jacob Blake, it caused a ripple effect of canceled games throughout the professional leagues unlike anything witnessed before. “This may be the most important social justice statement by sports in half a century,” penned Richard Lapchick, UCF director of the DeVos Sport Business Management program, in an Orlando Sentinel op-ed. For all of these watershed moments, there are decades of unrelenting work behind the scenes that have led to improvements. That’s where Lapchick — an internationally recognized expert in the field of race and gender issues in sport and a pioneer in his own right in the fight for human rights and racial equality — comes in.
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ILLUSTRATION BY LISA HANEY
FAIR PLAY
One of his most effective tools for enacting change at a fundamental, institutional level has been his acclaimed Racial and Gender Report Card, which he began in 1988. Compiled by graduate students in UCF’s DeVos Sport Business Management program and published annually by The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES), the report card examines the racial and gender makeup of players, coaches and staff in America’s professional sports organizations, including the NBA, NFL, MLB, MLS and WNBA. This year, the NHL announced it would partner for a private, internal analysis after taking a 20-plus-year hiatus, and discussions are also being held with NASCAR and the tennis associations. When Lapchick started publishing these report cards, his mission was to put pressure on the leagues to hire more women and people of color in decision-making roles. Back then, leagues weren’t keen on the project and rarely cooperated. Now, he has sports organizations requesting analyses. “The report card illuminates very clearly the gaps in representation across all sports and the work that has to be done,” says Oris Stuart, the NBA’s chief people and inclusion officer. “I can’t tell you how many people I’ve had the privilege of talking to who are familiar with the Lapchick report and are not scared away by those gaps. They want to be part of the solution.” The leagues are held to the same standard as Lapchick’s graduate students at UCF — anything below a B is considered a failing grade. The NBA and WNBA are the standouts among their peers for both gender and racial inclusion. Although the other leagues did well in 2019 in racial inclusion, gender grades still need to improve dramatically. Lapchick says the greatest reward in cultivating the reports, which take about two months to complete, has been watching the grades improve steadily. He envisions a future of straight-A’s across the board. “When I started getting involved in diversity and inclusion 50 years ago, diversity, we argued, was a moral imperative, and that kind of fell off the table as diversity became a business imperative,” Lapchick says. “I think what happened this year is that we are once again talking about diversity and inclusion being a moral imperative as well as a business imperative.” Although the institute doesn’t compile race and gender report cards on individual college athletic departments yet, it did complete a special report card in 2017 in honor of the 45th anniversary of Title IX. That special report examined the Power Five conferences (SEC, ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and Pac-12), Big East, Ivy League and American Athletic Conference. UCF was the only school in the country to earn an A grade for racial and gender hiring practices of head coaches across women’s teams. “I am definitely working in the right place,” Lapchick says.
Drawing on a lifelong love of hip-hop, a UCF professor has developed three new business courses based on innovation and entrepreneurship. BY NICOLE DUDENHOEFER ’17
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ip-hop lovers know at the heart of the genre is hustle, which is essential to any great business. So for C. Keith Harrison, the DeVos Sport Business Management Graduate Program chief academic officer, associate unit head and professor, it was only natural to develop courses around the culture and music he grew up with in Southern California. Within the past year, Harrison has launched three new graduate and undergraduate courses, including one for DeVos students, centered around the business of hip-hop innovation and entrepreneurship. Through different case studies, students will examine products such as Dr. Dre’s Beats and the success of millionaires such as Diddy to understand how hip-hop has grown from an
underground expression into a global influence. What are some things students will learn in these courses? Students will learn the history of hip-hop — that it was a cultural expression that has inadvertently become big business. Hip-hop references general business principles. An example is the growth of entrepreneurship. In my era of hip-hop, cassette tapes were sold out of a car. Another example is looking at royalties. In the ’90s, Master P was the first artist to keep 85 percent of his sales and that was unheard of at the time. Why is it important that UCF offers business courses focused on hip-hop?
This is another impactful way to teach students business through one of the greatest art forms, which evolved from two turntables and a microphone to billion-dollar industries. To me, it’s the intersection of diversity and innovation. Hip-hop culture and personalities are major global influencers, and any business school should be studying that. What makes hip-hop such an influential force in business? Hip-hop has always been about the audience making artists relevant and is a great case study for sport and other entertainment industries. It goes back to “Throw your hands in the air, and wave ’em like you just don’t care.” It’s gone from being underground to being marginalized to crossing over to the mainstream to becoming hypercommercialized. You’re on sabbatical for the fall semester as a Nasir Jones Hiphop Fellow at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard. How will this experience influence these courses?
I’m going into one of the most intellectual academic environments, historically, so I’ll be learning from the W.E.B. Du Bois Research Institute and alums from the Hutchins Center. I’ll be developing content for a future course that examines the parallels in hip-hop culture between Nas and Nipsey Hussle in terms of innovation and entrepreneurship. I’ll also be looking into artists and rappers across generations, and there will be a section on women in hip-hop, from Queen Latifah to MC Lyte to Cardi B and so on. Sabbatical is a time to refresh and regroup, and I’m very grateful to UCF and the College of Business for their support. Being in a new environment and just having some time to think and write is exciting. Quite frankly, Harvard has the preeminent department of African and African American studies, so it’ll be great to have this fellowship to enhance what I do at UCF when I’m back to teaching and researching in the spring. To learn more about UCF’s new hip-hop business courses, visit ucf.edu/pegasus.
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A prominent Ocoee resident, July Perry was beaten, shot and lynched as a warning to other Black citizens who dared to vote. He was one of the 30 to 80 residents killed and whose homes were burned down during the Ocoee massacre in 1920.
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THE TRUTH LAID BARE It’s taken nearly 100 years for healing to begin from the 1920 Ocoee massacre. Somewhere between the evil of that night and the long-overdue commemorations of today are timeless lessons you might not expect.
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By Robert Stephens
ladys Franks Bell woke up three minutes ago and her phone is ringing — again. “I’ve been getting so many calls these past few months,” she says. “People want to ask me what happened to my dad’s family that night. Daddy will always be a hero to a lot of people.” “That night” was on Election Day, November 2, 1920. Known as the Ocoee massacre, it is one of the most horrific examples of racial hatred imaginable. Dozens of Black people were killed. More than 200 others were run out of town in the then-unincorporated part of west Orange County, fleeing from bullets and their burning homes. Among them: 18-year-old Richard Allen Franks, who led his six younger siblings through muck and alligator-infested water in the middle of the night to safety in Plymouth, Florida (where Franks Bell was born, raised and lives to this day at the age of 81). On his back, Allen, as he was known, carried his brother, Cornell, who had paraplegia. “Daddy was about 6 feet tall with strong hands,” Franks Bell says. “But he was a giant of a man because he cared about everyone — I mean everyone. You know, the details of that night are in my book. That’s what everyone seems to want.” She’s referring to Visions Through My Father’s Eyes, which she self-published in 2015. The acts inflicted by a mob that night and the fear that followed, it’s all in there. But in her conversations, she’d like to focus on something else: “My father never allowed any room for hate. None.” And that leaves anyone who’s listening to wonder: “How could that possibly be?”
who grew up on the west side of Orange County through most of the 20th century, Francina Boykin was told to avoid Ocoee. The abusive treatment of Black people, however, wasn’t confined to the Ocoee city limits. Boykin had rocks thrown at her whenever she walked from her home in Apopka to the neighborhood store. Her grandfather was badly beaten by members of the Ku Klux Klan. “When it came to Ocoee,” she says, “we just didn’t go there, and we didn’t ask why.” Unspoken memories of “that night” haunted the region for nearly 80 years. Any kind of redemption had been muffled in the silent chasm between then and now, between white and Black. “We have to acknowledge the bad part of our history,” says UCF Associate Professor of History Robert Cassanello, who has spent 15 years researching Ocoee and trying to understand what went so terribly wrong there. “That’s how we grow — by seeing ourselves in it.” So let’s first see ourselves in the early 1900s. Black people were moving in from the Carolinas, Georgia and Alabama. They found opportunity in the fruit-bearing land of Orange County and bought parcels of citrus groves and made them flourish. Boykin remembers a gentleman in Apopka once telling her, “The people from Ocoee would come riding over here on horses with gold tassels. We thought, ‘They must be doing well over there.’ ” By 1920, some Black Ocoee residents were driving nice cars and planning to send kids to college. One of
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them, July Perry, had become a prominent businessman who would help broker land deals and arrange work for people. He also began registering Black residents to vote. “They were doing what Booker T. Washington had proposed in his Atlanta Compromise Speech in 1895,” says Connie Lester, UCF associate professor of history and editor of the Florida Historical Quarterly. “He said that by working hard, acquiring property and becoming a vital part of the economy, white people will see your contribution and accept you as voters.” The test of acceptance came with the 1920 presidential election: Republican Warren Harding versus Democrat James Cox. The NAACP actively registered Black voters throughout Florida. John Cheney, a white attorney and former judge running for U.S. Senate, strongly encouraged Black residents in Orange County to exercise their right. “I’m sure they were excited to vote,” says Robert Hickey, whose grandfather, John Hickey, had grand plans for the 120 acres he owned in Ocoee. But an opposing force loomed. Cheney received a letter saying if any Black residents attempted to vote “there will be serious trouble.” The daughter of a prominent white Ocoee official would tell a researcher nearly 50 years later that “90 percent of all law enforcement officers, judges, public servants and lawyers in Winter Garden and Ocoee were Klan members.” “The KKK held parades around the state in a show of intimidation three days before the election,” says Cassanello. “The cultural touchstones of the time were being threatened — white supremacy among them. When that happens, it creates angst, sometimes in the form of violence.”
the exact sequence of events on November 2, 1920, but most accounts agree on this montage: Mose Norman pulled his car up to the Ocoee polling precinct that morning to vote. He was denied and drove to Orlando to tell Cheney, who told Norman to go back and take the names of anyone suppressing his right. When Norman returned to Ocoee with Cheney’s message, gunshots were fired. Norman escaped. That night and into the next morning, Col. Sam Salisbury rallied a mob of as many as 200 white men from around the region to find Norman. They surrounded the home of Norman’s friend, July Perry. More gunfire ensued. The people living in Ocoee’s Black community ran for safety. Some were caught. Some were shot. Some were never heard from again. Perry was beaten, shot, jailed, dragged and lynched. Stories over the years have said between 30 and 80 Black people died that night. The stories also confuse who shot first and who said what. “The particulars might be debated,” says Lester, “but they can’t get in the way of the substance. That’s the issue that lingers.” Armstrong Hightower hid in the citrus groves with his sister. His description 80 years later would paint a vivid picture of the particulars and substance: “That’s the night the devil got loose in Ocoee.” The fires set by the mob burned a hellish hole right through the Black community. Norman fled to Stuckey, Florida, and then to Harlem. Perry’s wife escaped to Tampa with their teenage daughter, Coretha. John Hickey had to abandon his 120 acres and his dreams. “Everything he pursued came to a screeching halt,”
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says Robert Hickey, “and there was nothing he could do about it.”
as soon as July Perry’s body was lowered from the light pole (some sources say it was a tree limb) near the Orlando home of John Cheney, who lost the Senate race that night. The 1920 census says 255 Black residents and 560 white residents lived in Ocoee. Within months of the Election Day massacre, no more than two Black residents remained. From the 1930s into the 1970s, not a single Black person lived in the city. Few would even go near it as the eerie silence permeated the entire region. “After the massacre, newspapers advised that order had been restored and everyone should stop talking about whatever happened,” Lester says. A 2019 report from the Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability includes an item that apparently floated within the sea of denials. It’s an advertisement in the December 12, 1920, edition of the Orlando Sentinel: “Special Bargains. Several Beautiful Little Groves Belonging to the Negroes That Have Just Left Ocoee. Must Be Sold—See B.M. Sims.” Sims was one of Ocoee’s wealthiest white landowners. In July 1921, the Orlando Sentinel reported that another angry mob had “injured” a Black man, George Betsy, because “he talked too much about the trouble at Ocoee last November.” The next newspaper article known to be published with any hint of the real story would be 65 years later, in 1986, the year Ocoee hired its first city worker. So how did the truth disappear about what the Orange County Regional History Center calls “the largest incident of voting-day violence in United States history?” As the character Roger “Verbal” Kint popularized in the movie The Usual Suspects: “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a law directing schools across Florida to teach students about Ocoee’s Election Day massacre. A section of State Road 438 in Ocoee has been renamed July Perry Highway. A historic marker will be dedicated in another part of the city. “What you see now is the easy part,” Boykin says. The hard part has been finding people to open up. “White people took great pains to not breathe a word about it,” says Cassanello. “The Black people, like anyone who experiences trauma, probably didn’t want to relive it.” Robert Hickey says he would hear bits and pieces about the massacre while eating oranges with his grandparents in the 1950s. “But,” he says, “I had no idea of the gravity of
When it came to Ocoee, we just didn’t go there, and we didn’t ask why. — Francina Boykin
The day after the election, The Orlando Sentinel — then known as The Evening Reporter-Star — reported eight deaths and July Perry’s lynching, but the details and total number of deaths and destruction were far more sinister.
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it all. I just knew my grandfather was bitter about something.” Bitterness. Trauma. Deceit. It all simmered. Fear was the lid that kept it from boiling over. “To talk about it was to perhaps invite more problems,” Lester says. Author Zora Neale Hurston penned a story in 1939 titled The Ocoee Riot, which wasn’t published until 1989. In 1969, Lester Dabbs, a white educator new to the city, heard whispers about an event in 1920 and made it the topic of his postgraduate research at Stetson University. Knowing the thesis might spark violence, he decided to keep it private until all of his sources had died. Dabbs instead became a community mediator. And what about Coretha Perry, July Perry’s daughter who escaped that night? She said she would never say the word “Ocoee” again or “even look at it on a map.” But she could not ignore one constant reminder: a scar on her arm from a bullet. There was one place, though, where someone had been sharing the story about the unspeakable: in Plymouth, at Allen Franks’ dining room table. “Daddy sometimes had tears in his eyes when he talked because he couldn’t understand why anyone would shoot people and take everything they owned,” Franks Bell says. “You could still sense fear. But never hate. I had white friends over to our house to play. Daddy was a father figure to them, too. He’d say, ‘We’re all God’s children.’ ” Allen Franks died in 1994. “I still miss him, especially now,” Franks Bell says. “We could use more people like him today.”
as she looks out the window of the Orlando law firm where she’s worked for 33 years. She
Preserving Our Most DifficulT History
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onnie Lester became aware of Ocoee’s Election Day massacre shortly after moving to Florida in 2005. Five years later, the UCF associate professor
Despite being the victim of continued racism in the decades following the Ocoee massacre, Francina Boykin was among those who convinced the community to break its own silence on an ominous past so it could begin the slow process of change.
acknowledges the marching and the protesting of the Black Lives Matter movement. “We can’t just say ‘forget it’ and move on from injustice,” she says. “But violence and shouting won’t help. We all need to listen to each other. Then we can make progress. We proved it.” She says Ocoee’s “Rosa Parks moment” came in the late 1990s. Curtis Michelson, a white man unfamiliar with Ocoee’s reputation, encouraged a Black friend with a soothing voice to intern at a radio station. The friend quit that same week, telling Michelson, “Ocoee’s no place for a brother.” So Michelson brought a group of people together — students and professionals, old and young, Black and white — to find out why race had torn the community apart. They called themselves Democracy Forum. “We researched facts and asked questions,” Boykin says, “and we found truth.” The documented evidence of the Ocoee massacre was easier to find than the group anticipated. The death certificate for July Perry showed cause of death: “By being hung.” Census records showed that the Black population of Ocoee disappeared overnight after the 1920 election. They found a letter in the NAACP’s anti-lynching files, written by Ocoee resident Annie Hamiter. She’d smuggled the letter into a crate of oranges bound for a buyer in Ohio, apologizing for the delivery being late. “One of the wickedest happenings of a lifetime happened here.” And she explained how all the Black residents had been forced from their homes. “That was powerful,” Boykin says.
of history helped establish the Regional Initiative for Collecting History, Experiences, and Stories (RICHES). “There are other places like Ocoee,” Lester says. “Places where individual horror was never recorded. But that doesn’t mean history is gone. It’s just hidden, sometimes among the people.” Speaking with descendants
People gradually came forward to talk. Armstrong Hightower experienced the tragedy firsthand. When a writer for a national news outlet arrived in 2001, Hightower, then in his 90s, asked, “What took you so long?” Eventually, for every Black descendant who shared a piece of the story, a white descendant would do the same — some of them apologizing for their families’ getting the story wrong all along.
to read her book and learn from her father’s example. “Despite everything Daddy experienced, he leaned on his Christian faith to overcome hate. He was all about love, no matter what. That’s why he’ll always be a hero.” At Greenwood Cemetery in Orlando, three plots offer irony and maybe some sort of unintended symbol of reconciliation. Here rests John Cheney, the man who wanted so badly to usher in the day for Black people to vote freely. Also here is Col. Sam Salisbury, the man who prevented them from voting in 1920 by stirring up the mob. The most visited site, though, is a short walk away. This is where, on Election Day in 2018, carloads of Black and white voters came to place their “I Voted” stickers at the headstone of July Perry, 98 years after he and his neighbors were denied their right to do so. “Can you believe it?” Boykin says.
from the Ocoee massacre has had an impact on Lester and on the mission of RICHES. Colleagues and students record conversations and follow leads to physical documents, all of which are digitized and preserved for easy access. They’re doing the same for others who have been reluctant to share their stories —
veterans and people in the LGBTQ community, among them. “It’s too easy to say movements, like the civil rights movement, fix everything,” says Lester. “It’s a mistake if we don’t listen and address the pain. Then we can keep a record of it so future generations don’t forget.”
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THE RIGHT TO VOTE? Since the 15th Amendment made it illegal to deny citizens the right to vote based on “race, color or previous servitude,” Black Americans and other people of color have fought to overcome various methods intended to suppress that right. Here are just a few. BY LAURA J. COLE
THE RATIFICATION OF THE 15TH
Amendment in 1870 ensured the right for Black men to vote, and the 19th Amendment did so for women in 1920. But the act of actually casting a ballot has been far from simple or without great risk for many Americans. Many obstacles — most passed as legislation — were put in place by those wishing to disenfranchise and effectively silence Black voters. In addition to the intimidation and violence witnessed during the Ocoee massacre, those in power also preyed on limited resources, such as finances or access to education, to suppress votes. The one constant since 1870 has been Black Americans’ fortitude in fighting to exercise the hallmark of a true democracy. “No one gets the right to vote because they ask for it,” says Associate Professor of History Robert Cassanello, who is writing a book on voting rights in Florida. “People get the right to vote because they demand it and they organize. It’s a hard-fought kind of thing.” For example, Cassanello cites the Ku Klux Klan marching in Orlando, Lake City and Jacksonville in 1920 to intimidate Black voters. But while the KKK marched, Black women in Jacksonville showed up to laugh at them, according to several reports. Black citizens in Jacksonville also voted in large numbers that year, only to have their votes thrown out. Yet still, they persisted. Here are just a handful of tactics put in place in Florida over the years that Black voters — with the help of supporters — worked to overcome.
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POLL TAX
In response to the 15th Amendment, 11 states in the South, including Florida, instituted a poll tax, requiring residents to provide proof of payment in order to vote. “The poll tax was created primarily to disenfranchise Black voters,” Cassanello says. “It had a lot of opposition, but that opposition came from white Democratic lawmakers who were concerned with disenfranchising poor white voters. So it was adopted reluctantly in Florida, not because of what it did to Black voters, but because of the impact it could potentially have on poor white voters.” Though the 24th Amendment abolished the poll tax in 1964, some activists argue that making former felons pay court costs and fines levied against them in order to vote is effectively a modern poll tax.
THE GRANDFATHER CLAUSE
Nearly a century would pass after the ratification of the 15th Amendment before many Black citizens were able to vote in the South. That’s because prior to being ratified, a half-dozen states — including Florida — passed laws stating that men could only vote if they could prove prior ancestral right. “As a result of the grandfather clause, through the late 19th century and very early 20th century, voters had to prove that their grandfather was eligible to vote in January of 1867, when African Americans did not have yet the right. It was effectively one of the first measures to disenfranchise Black voters in the South,” Cassanello says.
AUSTRALIAN MULTIPLE BALLOT SYSTEM
Before the Australian ballot system was adopted in the United States in 1888, voters — which included mostly white men at the time — would publicly cast their vote out loud or write the names of their candidates on a slip of paper. Named after the country that developed it, the Australian multiple ballot system included the names of all candidates, and ballots were handed to voters at polling stations.
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The ballots also often included lengthy or obtuse instructions intended to confuse voters who could not read. “In Florida, voters would have an entire broadsheet, like the front page of a newspaper, full of instructions for voting,” Cassanello says. “In effect, it was a literacy test. When Florida lawmakers tried to introduce a bill to provide a literacy test in Florida, they all determined that the Australian ballot system was better than a literacy test at disenfranchising Black voters while not disenfranchising poor white voters.”
HOW BLACK VOTERS HAVE INFLUENCED AMERICA’S POLITICAL PARTIES
ALL-WHITE PRIMARIES
VOTE TOSSING
Another way that Black voters have been suppressed is by throwing their ballots away. “In the 1920 election, for example, African Americans in Jacksonville turned out to vote in large numbers, but when I compared the election returns with what I read in the local paper about how many African Americans were in line to vote, the numbers didn’t match up,” says Cassanello. “There was no way the votes of African Americans were represented in the official count.” Frequent reports of vote tossing occur, and one reason to account for it is that there are no national guidelines for voting. In Florida, as elsewhere, elections are run on the local level. “Back then, it was very easy for election officials just to kind of toss Black ballots. There are reports of this throughout the South,” Cassanello says.
Beginning in 1896, the Florida Legislature approved political parties to host and pay for their own primaries, allowing private organizations to accept and reject members at will. “Probably the single most effective means to disenfranchise Black voters was the all-white primary,” says Cassanello. “The Democratic Party essentially became an all-white political party, and African Americans were not allowed to join, starting right before the turn of the last century.” Since Florida was essentially a one-party state at the time, winners were selected during the primaries. “The election in effect became the primary, because once somebody won the all-white primary, then they would sail to victory, and the November elections were just a procedure. It was no longer an election that mattered,” Cassanello says.
The Republican Party was founded in 1854 by disgruntled Democrats, Whigs and others to combat expansion of slavery into Western territories. By the time the Civil War ended, 90 percent of African Americans had joined the party of Abraham Lincoln. Until the late 1920s, “the Republican Party would be considered a Black political party in the minds of white Southerners,” Cassanello says. The initial shift of Black voters from the Grand Old Party to the Democratic Party began as a fracturing that, as a result of all-white primaries and hardening of segregation, led to a racially segregated Black Republican Party and a white Republican Party in the South. It was also a result of the Great Migration, when nearly 6 million African Americans moved from rural Southern states to urban centers in the North, Midwest and West, and were able to vote. President Franklin D. Roosevelt saw political potential in these new voters and courted them to the Democratic Party through his New Deal program, leading some Black voters to change parties. President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Civil Rights Act of 1964 led more Black voters to join the Democratic Party. At the same time, his political opponent, Barry Goldwater, focused on bringing former Southern Democrats over to the Republican Party, which essentially caused the two parties to flip — in both their contingents and their political values. “I would say Roosevelt is credited for opening the door to Black voters, but Johnson really welcomed African Americans into the Democratic Party formally,” says Cassanello. “It’s a little bit more complicated because Johnson did play footsies with segregationists in the past even though he helped pass the Civil Rights Act, so I wouldn’t say it’s a neat history. I certainly wouldn’t make Roosevelt and Johnson look like the white equivalent of Martin Luther King Jr. This was all political pragmatism. They realized their future and the future of the Democratic Party were connected to Black voters.”
“No one gets the right to vote because they ask for it. People get the right to vote because they demand it and they organize. It’s a hard-fought kind of thing.” — Robert Cassanello, associate professor of history
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WE ARE UCF Nearly half of UCF’s undergraduates are students of color. As our country reckons with our past and its lasting effects on today’s society, students in UCF’s cultural organizations remain focused on a better future. BY JENNA MARINA LEE
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2018, junior Ashleigh Allman arrived at UCF ready to embark on her college career four months after enduring the most traumatic experience of her life — the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that killed 17 of her peers and injured 17 others. She needed a fresh start, and she needed the support of a community and family. She found what she was looking for in one of UCF’s registered student organizations, SISTUHS Incorporated. “They were a big part of my healing,” says Allman, an advertising/public relations major who is now the group’s public relations chair. “I found a group of Black women like myself who I was able to speak to on a deeper, personal level. Once I became a member, I had a place to
come home and a group of women to call family.” Students can join more than 35 cultural registered student organizations through UCF’s Office of Student Involvement. The students who shared their stories for this article all echo Allman’s sentiments — their organizations have become a home away from home; their fellow members, a family. Their bonds are rooted in similar values, a love of food and traditions, and a commitment to lifting each other up. UCF believes that excellence comes from difference. These students and organizations are working to enact change that will finally eradicate injustice and inequality, so that we can live up to our country’s founding principle: All [humans] are created equal.
PEGASUS Systemic racism and ignorance still exist, unfortunately. The
SAMPADA NYALAPATLA Accounting and finance Indian Student Association events director
[I want people to] realize that everyone has a story, everyone has something going on at home, everyone has some reason why their parents
only thing we can really do is keep striving, and remember there’s really room for everyone to help combat it. … For those who can’t necessarily empathize with me when it comes to the FRIDSON JANVIER Emerging media NAACP at UCF secretary
brought them to this country.
color of my skin, I still advise you to get involved because
everyone has a role in this fight
for equality and equity.
I think everyone — no matter which community you belong to —
needs to understand and
practice tolerance
and acceptance. Especially at UCF, the harmony needs to be
prevalent. Even if we have all these separate cultural and ethnic organizations, we also have to learn to acknowledge each other’s presence and acknowledge each other’s history and roots.
WHAT I WISH PEOPLE KNEW
The Asian American community is overlooked. We are often the forgotten
minority in society. We are the fastest-growing ethnic group to migrate to the United States, and our student body population is growing at UCF as well.
But we are given little priority or attention in diversity and inclusion programs.
NORYNNE CALEJA Legal studies and international and global studies Asian Pacific American Coalition vice president
We are asking for change in
our community and more representation and awareness.
Saudi Arabia has reformed many
policies to help empower
women and youth, Men of Integrity has been coed since we started in 2003 but because of our name and logo, it throws a lot of people. We believe to have a strong man, you need a strong woman. We cannot be successful if we don’t have each other. More broadly,
I wish people understood Black culture has a stamp on everything from music LEAH FREEMAN Interdisciplinary studies Men of Integrity president
to food to art to film — we’re everywhere. And that’s what I really love about my heritage. That’s why it does
sadden me to see people who aren’t as educated on certain subjects try to tear my culture down. I wish people knew how hard it is.
but some people still have the wrong idea about Saudis. At UCF, we’re trying to act as ambassadors for our people. We opened our organization for all students to join so there can be more understanding about our heritage and culture. We are proud of it, and we want everyone to know about it.
MOHAMMED ALBAR Civil engineering Saudi Students Association vice president
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Everything has been overwhelming with the current events in the U.S. and the Philippines. Over the summer, the Philippines president passed an anti-terror law that has a very broad definition of what constitutes terrorism. This law takes away human rights and freedoms. If you’re protesting, expressing opposition against the government, then you’re considered a terrorist. Media is being censored and shut
WHAT RECENT EVENTS HAVE TAUGHT ME
down there. I started advocating over the summer to bring awareness to the issues.
I think using your voice is really important. Before college, I was considered shy, and it took a lot of courage to actually talk to people. Joining the Filipino Student Association helped me find my voice.
KAITLIN ALTAMIRANO Nursing Filipino Student Association president
I have a niece in Chicago who is turning 2 in December. What is the world going to look like for her when she’s grown up? If we continue along the path that we are now, I don’t think there will be a world for her, and that truly frightens me. I just want to give her the sense that somebody is fighting for her.
This is a wake-up call. We need to end police brutality and the mistreatment of African Americans, but I also think there’s a global problem [of injustice and discrimination].
STEDMON IHEJIRIKA Architecture pending Black Student Union co-multimedia director
We have to use this [time] to create a ripple effect of change. For example, there is an Indian cream company that was called out because
SAMPADA NYALAPATLA
I don’t want anybody
to feel like they can’t
live in a world they
were born into.
its products promote being light-skinned. The Indian Student Association is planning to have a workshop with the Asian Pacific American Coalition to talk about why colorism is so apparent
I went to one of the Black Lives Matter protests in Winter
in the Asian and Indian communities.
Park. I was marching alongside a Black woman and at
I think what’s happening
one point, [the protest leaders] asked everyone to kneel.
in this country is
During that time, we recited all the names of the Black
conversations
got through the names, the more she cried. It made me
people who had been recently killed. I heard the lady
allowing us to have that we couldn’t have before and potentially solve these big issues that spread across cultures.
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beside me whimpering and crying quietly. The more we tear up. This lady may not even know these people, I may NORYNNE CALEJA
not have known her, but I felt what she felt. The fact that I felt her hurt angered me but that anger pushed me —
there’s still work to be done.
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I’m studying to be an animator so I can create my own coming-of-age television series.
I want it to be a show that anybody could
look at the screen and say, ‘That’s me.’
Growing up, I didn’t see many people on TV who looked like me or did things I did. As a Black male, there’s always a stereotype that we’re rarely supposed to show emotions. Am I just supposed to hold it in? In my show, I want to specifically let my young Black male viewers know that it’s OK to be happy, to be angry, and of course cry. They’re basic emotions that they shouldn’t be robbed of.
FRIDSON JANVIER
Over the summer, we collaborated with the Florida
Asian American Student Union and other Filipino Student Associations across
Florida to plan an art exhibition. The goal was to show pride and resilience through art. UCF’s FSA presented on the history of the Philippines, covering pre-colonial through post-colonial eras and educating audiences about the anti-terror law.
KAITLIN ALTAMIRANO
HOW I’M TAKING ACTION I started another student organization over the summer called Girl Up Orlando. My heritage
STEDMON IHEJIRIKA
and my Indian roots bring out the feminist in me because growing up, I saw so many things women had to face. In my mind, it’s about
I decided to start a business,
more than helping an individual person.
and we’re basically a consultant company
If you empower and educate
people organize and start working
family becomes better and
girls and women, the
for startups — a team who helps toward the path of their dream.
The entire business mission is generational change. How can we make this generation better than the previous? I feel
SAMPADA NYALAPATLA
it’s a way of escaping out of the cycle of poverty,
so in the end, you’re helping society as a whole.
like once we come together as a generation, no matter what skin color, we can start working to get past a lot of our issues.
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I don’t want anyone harmed anymore. I don’t want any more racial wars.
I just want straight peace. I don’t like arguing, and I don’t like fighting. I like communicating. I like for us to come to an agreement and an understanding: “OK, this is what I didn’t like. This is what I will fix.” I want us to just talk things out and resolve issues through communication.
STEPHEN BLACKWOOD Health sciences Caribbean Students’ Association team leader
WHAT I HOPE FOR THE FUTURE NORYNNE CALEJA
UCF has had several discussions and forums since President Cartwright arrived, and I hope that the university takes action — not just performative action — to implement initiatives that they’re hearing requested from student leaders.
I’d love to see the establishment of the
Asian/Pacific Islander American
Faculty and Staff Association because we don’t have one, and we have Black, Hispanic and LGBTQ+ faculty and
staff associations. I also hope diversity and inclusion conversations will be brought up during Board of Trustees meetings. The board makes decisions and shapes policy at our institution, and they need to care about our large minority population.
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I want us to change cancel culture.
You don’t have to cancel
everything, especially people. Let’s work on educating them. Maybe I’m optimistic, but I really think that people aren’t born to innately do bad things. Oftentimes I think people do or say bad things because they’re ignorant of why it’s a problem. If we just keep canceling people and don’t take the time to educate them, that person will just keep doing that thing, and no one is better for it.
SAMPADA NYALAPATLA
I just really want people to educate
themselves more and have
understanding and empathy for others. We have the election coming up — read up on the politicians, read what they’re advocating and campaigning for and vote for what’s right.
LEAH FREEMAN
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I hope for the Saudi Students Association to get
Although I do think UCF is an amazing school, I feel like we
more involved in the community at UCF and
should have mandatory sensitivity training for everyone because
become one of the most active organizations.
there are people who genuinely don’t know how to treat people
I really want the students at UCF to visit Saudi Arabia and experience our culture. MOHAMMED ALBAR
of different races, ethnicities or genders. Everyone can think their way is absolute, but when their ignorance is harming other people, that’s an issue. Beyond UCF,
I’m hopeful that the
murder of people who
look like me ceases. I would like the justice system to also really step it up. We heard
for months, “Arrest the officers who killed Breonna Taylor.” And when the ruling finally came down, only one officer was charged HECTOR CUMBA Political science Puerto Rican Student Association public relations representative
for the bullets that missed her body. Imagine how that makes me and other Black people feel? Minuscule is the answer. I really want the slap on the wrist to be harder for those who commit such acts. If not, it just opens the floodgates of “if they can get away with it, then anyone can get away with it.”
I hope for
equal
opportunity. There’s the thought that if you
FRIDSON JANVIER
ASHLEIGH ALLMAN
work hard, you can truly achieve the American dream, and that’s something that’s been sold to us for a long time. And I feel like it’s only a half-truth. We see people working hard constantly, some people are working more than 40 hours a week at two jobs, and still they struggle to make it paycheck to paycheck. I feel like in a better world and a more progressive society, no matter what, if you objectively work hard, you should be able to guarantee yourself a successful future.
People often say the solution to [racism and discrimination] is coming together, and I agree. As a society, we need to start accepting people for their differences. I think that’s where we go wrong as a country. When it boils down to things like your skin color, the foods you eat and where you come from, we need to get to a point where if we cannot relate or understand, we still acknowledge and respect others’ differences. In SISTUHS, one thing we’re taught early on is
when you see a SISTUH, you see a friend. It doesn’t matter if they’re white, Black, Indian or whatever
— you’re a resource of support for that person.
I think if we all embodied that attitude,
we would be better people and have a better political climate.
U C F. E D U / P E G A S U S | 3 1
ILLUSTRATIONS BY MATT CHASE
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Centuries ago, it was tarring and feathering. Today, it’s a hashtag. It’s evolving, but is cancel culture effective? BY NICOLE DUDENHOEFER ’17
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Mob mentality. A modern socialjustice practice. An impediment to free speech. A platform for marginalized voices. Call it what you will. Cancel culture is a concept so hotly debated that it remains in limbo, much like many individuals’ attitudes toward it. The one common theme everyone seems to agree on is that cancel culture involves taking a public stance against an individual or institution for actions considered objectionable or offensive. But is it an effective way to hold those in positions accountable, or is it punishment without a chance for redemption? In July, when Harper’s Magazine published “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate” — a critique on cancel culture without directly naming it — it was met with immediate backlash. The letter was initially signed by 153 notable individuals, including J.K. Rowling — who has recently faced calls for cancellation due to social media comments considered transphobic by some. For Mel Stanfill, UCF assistant professor of texts and technology, the letter is an example of how cancel culture can be a complicated practice. “I think cancel culture can reflect awareness that people are not willing to accept things that they used to accept or have not been able to resist in the past, but in some ways it’s a moral panic,” says Stanfill, who is also an assistant professor of English. “The Harper’s letter was a bunch of really rich and famous people writing in a national magazine about how they’ve been silenced — yet they still get access to this forum. So it highlights the fact that [cancel culture is] this fear over something that is not actually real. So if we’re going to talk about cancel culture, we can’t talk about it in isolation, we have to put it in context.”
Influences from Black Culture While public shaming and silencing are practices that have been around as long as society itself, cancel culture is
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a somewhat new concept with specific ties to Black culture. According to the news site Vox, the first reference of canceling a person in pop culture possibly comes from the 1991 movie New Jack City, when Wesley Snipes’ character, Nino Brown, says, “Cancel that [woman]. I’ll buy another one,” referencing his girlfriend’s disapproval of his violent ways. In 2010, rapper Lil Wayne referenced the quote in his song “I’m Single.” But it was after a 2014 Love & Hip-Hop: New York episode when cast member Cisco Rosado told his love interest “You’re canceled,” that the term gained traction on social media. Soon after, Black Twitter began using it both jokingly and seriously to express their disagreement with others. “There are also these series of practices on Twitter, some of which have come from Black Twitter, of skilled insults, which come from the Dozens, a game common in Black communities of finding clever ways to put someone down,” Stanfill says. And while cancel culture’s origins are linked to playful banter, it also stems from one form of protest: boycotting. Started by the Irish in the 1880s, boycotting became a powerful social and political tool used successfully by African Americans during the civil rights movement, such as the Montgomery bus boycott sparked by Rosa Parks. “If you don’t have the ability to stop something through political means, what you can do is refuse to participate,” said Anne Charity Hudley — North Hall Endowed Chair in the Linguistics of African America at the University of California, Santa Barbara — in the same Vox article. “Canceling is a way to acknowledge that you don’t have to have the power to change structural inequality. You don’t even have to have the power to change all of public sentiment. But as an individual, you can still have power beyond measure.” The internet heightens that power by collectively amplifying the voices of marginalized people who may be a minority — and otherwise silenced — in their physical communities. It’s also allowed others to become aware and support them as allies. Since #BlackLivesMatter began in 2014 after George Zimmerman was
acquitted for killing Trayvon Martin, the hashtag has grown into a historic global movement. For decades, Black communities have spoken out about racial injustices and police brutality, but social media has bolstered attention around these issues and seriously shifted the nation’s recognition of the need for change — especially after the death of George Floyd. Social media’s public access has also allowed this form of public shaming to become a practice for people of all backgrounds to address varying issues.
Public Shaming Throughout Human History A core element of cancel culture, public shaming has been used since societies were first formed. Stocks, or public restraints, were used in medieval Europe up through Colonial America, where Puritans used them to punish criminals. Tarring and feathering was also a form of public corporal punishment used to keep people in line. And during World War II, French women who were deemed traitors had their heads shaved, says Stacey (Barreto) DiLiberto ’03 ’11PhD, a UCF lecturer in philosophy. Though often tied to personal punishment, public shaming has also been understood to be a positive social practice. “Public shaming is a long-standing public ritual that helped to uphold social bonds and make sure people within communities were equal and understood the norms, and to ensure no one got too high and mighty,” says Amanda Koontz, UCF associate professor of sociology. One common example, Koontz notes, comes from the !Kung people, a band society — the simplest known form of society — in southern Africa. During Christmas 1969, Canadian anthropologist Robert Borshay Lee presented the group with a large ox
“We have a tendency sometimes to say things via social media or other platforms that maybe we wouldn’t say if we were face to face with someone.” as a gift. Members made fun of his offering and called it a “bag of bones,” and it was later explained that this “shaming of the meat” practice was standard to keep someone humble whenever they brought back a large kill. This type of equalizing is understood to be a positive practice as the !Kung’s strong communal bonds have not been disrupted by the complex issues of modern societies, such as racism, sexism and political polarization. The in-person practice among people you know and live with also doesn’t translate to the scale of the global internet community, where often you’re ultimately engaging with strangers. Celebrities have always been highly susceptible to public criticism because of the nature of their privileged position. But in the era of cancel culture, they’re even more susceptible because they’re often viewed as agents of change, Koontz says. The #MeToo movement is one example of how publicly calling out powerful individuals can lead to a widespread cultural shift. When sexual abuse allegations against former film producer Harvey Weinstein became public in 2017, it led to his conviction as a sex offender. Other influential people have faced their own reckonings for similar misconducts, and societal attitudes
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toward sexism and sexual harassment are becoming more intolerant. But sometimes, public denouncement of powerful individuals can have the opposite effect of what is intended. When the Surviving R. Kelly docuseries premiered in January 2019, #MuteRKelly began trending, calling for the singer’s conviction for sexual crimes and an end to his career. But the increased negative attention around the artist seemed to backfire as on-demand streams for his music increased from 1.9 million the day before the docuseries began airing to 4.3 million — a 126 percent increase — on the day after the three-day premiere was completed. “The general public seems to have this power to hold accountable people who we’ve historically deemed powerful entities, but is that authority ultimately fleeting?” DiLiberto asks. “Yes, celebrities are real people too, and they say stupid things and do reprehensible things as well. But why should we care so much about what they do, as opposed to our own actions or our immediate community around us?”
according to a July report from DataReportal. “If something comes on your timeline or feed, and it’s outrageous or terrible, we often have this knee-jerk reaction, rather than really investigating issues or listening,” DiLiberto says. “We share so much stuff online, and we have a tendency sometimes to say things via social media or other platforms that maybe we wouldn’t say if we were face to face with someone.” In instances where someone has done something particularly egregious, perhaps committing a serious crime such as sexual assault, the case to cancel may seem clear-cut. But in other instances where certain behaviors may be more questionable than seriously problematic, deeper thinking, which requires time and effort, about the person and issues is required but rarely happens. “The instant nature of social media means that very large, complicated social issues get condensed into one sentence, one minute for TikTok [videos] or just a photo on Instagram,” Koontz says. “Everything is becoming
very succinct, and it both discourages nuanced discussion and encourages all-or-nothing stances. Cancel culture is ‘You’re all good, or you’re all bad,’ and human nature is much more complicated than that.” Humans are flawed beings, and it’s in our nature to make mistakes. And tactics such as online doxxing — publicizing private or identifying information — and their potentially permanent effects could leave everyone susceptible to being canceled. It’s worth asking, what motivates authentic, positive change? Amy Cooper — a white woman who called emergency services regarding Christian Cooper, a Black man, during a viral Central Park dispute about her illegally unleashed dog — has been fired from her job, charged with a misdemeanor for filing a false police report, and faced notoriety and ridicule. Cooper has apologized for her actions, but who determines the sincerity of it? She was dealt real consequences, yet racist incidents continue to happen and appear online daily.
“When you have these forms of public shaming [oftentimes through] filming these interactions, it turns social issues into something that is completely individualized,” Koontz says. “It puts great responsibility on an individual, and it does not [always] encourage actual societal change. We haven’t taken care of the larger institutional or systemic issues.” Social media has certainly changed the way we communicate, providing more ways to connect than ever before. But in many ways, it’s dividing us and causing us to focus our energy where it isn’t always needed. “So often we are told, ‘We must act and speak out, or we are part of the problem,’ and therefore we are not necessarily taught or trained that inaction or not speaking out can be a form of social-justice action,” Koontz says. “At some point, we need to think about ways we can create positive change instead of fueling negative causes.” Perhaps we all need to take a step back and listen.
The Digital Divide Whether you view cancel culture as empowering or destructive, the practice says a lot about our current cultural climate, which has been influenced by the increasingly digital world we inhabit. “We don’t have this distinction anymore between public and private, and it’s almost as if we’re living more of our lives online than we are in the real, tangible world,” DiLiberto says. This new way of living seems to be even more true during 2020, a time when we seem to be in constant crisis — from the COVID-19 pandemic to a resurgence in public awareness around long-standing racial injustices — all within an especially important election year. People are experiencing more unrest and heightened isolation, leading us to spend more time online. Globally, new social media users have grown by about 11 percent this year, and people are spending about 40 percent more time on social media,
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AlumKnights
PROTECTOR PAST Porsha Dossie ’14 ’18MA helps preserve American history for the National Park Service’s African American Civil Rights Network. BY JENNA MARINA LEE
W
hile most kids were watching Disney films or Nickelodeon shows, Porsha Dossie ’14 ’18MA was consuming Ken Burns documentaries and Roots with her stepfather. Then she would attend school the next day and ask her teacher when the class was finally going to move past the Puritans and learn about Harriet Tubman and Ida B. Wells. When she looks back at that precocious elementary schooler, she sees the early signs of a passion that led to her job today as program historian for the African American Civil Rights Network within the National Park Service. “I grew up in Miami, a diverse city compared to other places, and yet we still got a very whitewashed version of history,” she says. “When I got to UCF and I was able to have courses about my history, my professors were really encouraging, telling me, ‘You know you can do this as a job? All of these things you want to research and dive deeper into, this is what we do, and you can do it too.’ That was really affirming for me.” Now, the Burnett Honors Scholar and two-time history grad is responsible for maintaining the African American Civil Rights Network’s online database. The network presents a comprehensive narrative of the people, places and events associated with the civil rights movement in the United States.
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Most recently, she worked to get Florida’s first site — Jacksonville’s James Weldon Johnson Park, where in 1960 a white mob attacked Black protestors with ax handles during a sit-in at a whites-only lunch counter — added to the network. She also wrapped digital resources on The Negro Motorist Green Book — made better known by the 2018 Academy Award-winning film — and on women in the civil rights movement in honor of the 100th anniversary of women’s right to vote, which was celebrated in August. Her best days on the job are when she can listen to stories from people who interacted with Martin Luther King Jr. or when she hears from someone who accessed the network’s materials. “I once had someone email me and write, ‘I see my grandfather in that picture [of the Edmund Pettus Bridge] on your website. I had no idea he marched,’ ” she says. “The past isn’t some disconnected, faraway thing. We live it and interact with it every day even if we don’t realize it.”
What is one place from the African American Civil Rights Network that everyone should experience? The Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument in Jackson, Mississippi. It is the former home of Myrlie and Medgar Evers, a married couple who dedicated their lives to
the civil rights movement. Medgar was assassinated in 1963 in front of the home, and his murder and the national outrage that followed increased support for the legislation that became the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Myrlie continued not only to do her work with the NAACP in Mississippi, but she also worked for 31 years to bring Medgar’s killer to justice. I think that’s such a powerful story. Myrlie Evers-Williams is still alive, which you can’t say for a lot of civil rights figures.
Who are your heroes?
I have so many, and one of them is Harry T. Moore. I’m trying to get his site on the network. He and his wife, Harriette, were founders of the NAACP in Brevard County and registered more than 10,000 Black voters in Florida. On Christmas night in 1951, Ku Klux Klan members bombed their home in Mims. Because no hospital in Brevard County would care for Black patients, the Moores had to travel 30 miles away to Sanford, and they both died from their injuries. Florida was one of the deadliest states in the South in terms of lynchings. It was so brave for Harry to say, “I want to do this work,” and Harriette to say, “I want to do it with you,” knowing the possible
repercussions. I don’t know if I would have had that same courage.
Why is it important to study Black history?
This is U.S. history. I think if more people understood the history of this country and how complicated and messy it is but also how triumphant it can be, we could have a moment of reconciliation that would help heal us. … That’s what I love about history and my role. It’s not just standing in front of a classroom reciting facts. It’s a way to heal and move forward. Because when you know better, you do better.
How does the work you’re doing today support the Black Lives Matter movement?
Quoting many civil rights figures, “Show up where you can.” I look at the work that I can do as being part of that conversation for Black Lives Matter. Everything I do with the Civil Rights Network is informed by a Black radical tradition. A lot of what we’re experiencing now has a precedent in the past that can be looked at for guidance. I think my job within this movement is to do what I can as an educator to provide and share these resources.
The past isn’t some disconnected, faraway thing. We live it and interact with it every day even if we don’t realize it.
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Clockwise from top: Freedom March on Washington, D.C., in 1963 (Library of Congress); Stone of Hope statue at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C.; Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama; James Weldon Johnson Park (formerly Hemming Park) in Jacksonville, Florida (City of Jacksonville); civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965 (Library of Congress)
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Class Notes 1994 Ron Hart is the executive director for Lake County Water Authority in Tavares, FL.
Keith Kong ’17 appeared on The CW’s Penn & Teller: Fool Us, confounding the legendary magician duo and winning an opportunity to perform with them in Las Vegas. “Knowing that I was good enough to fool them using my mentalism made me feel like I was doing what I am meant to be doing,” the psychology grad says.
1995 Courtney (Riley) Clements is a customer success enablement manager at Glint.
1997 Tiffany Payne Geyer is a bankruptcy partner at BakerHostetler. Christopher Martin is a broker associate with Coldwell Banker Realty. Abigail (Petters) Beaty is a business architect at Salesforce. Belinda (Rosario) Reyes received the 2019 Association of Latino Administrators and Superintendents scholarship. She is the executive director for multicultural curriculum, instruction and compliance for the School District of Osceola County.
1998 David Bourns is president of Trevid Group in Pompano Beach, FL. Charles Lattimer is a senior faculty specialist at the University of Maryland Center for Advanced Transportation Technology Laboratory.
PHOTO BY JAMES PINARD
1971 Michael Lee retired after 20 years in corporate banking and 18 years of teaching.
1975
David Grice retired after 30 years in law enforcement, including 20 years as a police sergeant and first responder.
1981
Bill Hughes is the youth pastor at Priscilla Baptist Church in Bell, FL.
Steven Suazo retired after more than 40 years in the financial services industry.
1976
1983
Rufus King Jr. retired after 42 years in the healthcare industry, working in hospitals in Orlando, Atlanta and Birmingham, AL.
Charles Curtis retired after 36 years as a systems engineer in the defense industry.
1979 Hank Lunsford received the 2019–20 Helen Keller Award from the Florida Lions Clubs.
1980 Tedd Biddle retired after nearly 40 years as an engineer at Pratt & Whitney.
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1987 Veronica (Edwards) Berry read as part of the Christian Authors on Tour at the 2020 Harlem Book Fair. Kimber Randle-Scarborough retired from maternal-child nursing after 32 years.
Mike Tillema retired after two years as chief of flight operations at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and 26 years in the U.S. Air Force, earning the title colonel.
1988 Michele (Staggs-Parker) Bronson is the human resource manager at Gatorland.
1989 Patricia Farless ’95MA is an associate instructor of history at UCF.
1991 Stephen Klein is a project engineer for Traffic Control Devices in Clermont, FL.
1992 Kimberly (Lacey) Dill is the owner of Create Your Nature in Winter Park, FL.
1999 Steven Collins is a lieutenant colonel with the U.S. Army and serves as the chief of administrative law for the U.S. Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base. Jennifer (King) McVan is the director of marketing and communications at Tampa General Hospital.
2000 Heather Bailey received a Suncoast Regional Emmy Award for her news segment, “Silent Killer,” about deaths linked to keyless ignitions. Peter Greene is the manager of business intelligence at Eaton Corporation. Fred Piccolo is the chief spokesperson for Governor Ron DeSantis.
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Kevin Ward is a filmmaker and television editor in Los Angeles. He wrote and directed the feature film, A Patient Man, which screened at the Austin Film Festival.
2001 Brian Cavallaro was an event producer for YouTube’s “Dear Class of 2020” virtual celebration.
2002 Jason Coon was named director of marketing for the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. Timothy Kelley is a systems administrator for ERC at Kennedy Space Center. Mary (Pezet) Mashke is director of marketing and public relations at King & Associates Real Estate. Harlee Ann Samuels ’16MSW is a social worker care coordinator at NCH North Naples Hospital and earned her clinical social worker license in June.
2003
Lori Meier received the Distinguished Faculty Award in Teaching at East Tennessee State University. She is an associate professor of curriculum and instruction. Charles Reed partnered with students at American University to develop a COVID-19 resources app. Sadie (Sham) Higgins founded Palonka, a free service that sends bundled messages. Krista Thompson ’08MNM is a senior attorney for FedEx.
2007 Katie Broxson ’09MA is the director of membership and marketing for Naples Bay Resort & Marina. Michael Chase is an adjunct professor at the University of Connecticut. Jennifer Wakefield was named one of the Top 50 Economic Developers by Consultant Connect. She is the chief operating officer of Greater Richmond Partnership in Virginia.
2010 Ahmi Buggle is a registered nurse in the emergency room at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. Armando Diaz is vice president at Cornerstone Government Affairs in Washington, D.C. James Infanzon earned his MD from the Medical University of South Carolina and started a residency in emergency medicine in Marietta, GA, in July. Steven Lew is the assistant principal at Patriot Elementary School in Cape Coral, FL. Aubree Rider is the co-founder and owner of The Heroes Group, a small business accounting firm in Orlando. Brandon Satoren is a controller at the PennantPark investment firm in New York.
2011 Daniel Bueller is chair of the mathematics department at St. Petersburg College.
Jenn Brinn is the founder of and chief strategist at Brinnovate, a digital marketing company in Nashville, TN.
2008 Carol (Galbicsek) Stinnett is a web content manager for UCF.
Emily Hanna ’15MS is the executive director for Bike/Walk Central Florida.
Jordan Davis is a senior director at Purple Strategies, a communications firm in Alexandria, VA.
Ashley McGrath ’10MA is a quality analyst at J.Lodge and was named the Space Coast UCF alumni chapter’s 2020 Notable Knight.
Jeff Kepler is a graphic designer who was commissioned by Adobe to create artwork for their Honor Heroes campaign.
Sean Spence received the Most Promising Engineer in Government Award at the 2020 Black Engineer of the Year Award STEM conference. He is an international strategy consultant at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Lisa Lamarre is a career and technical education academic coordinator at Indian River State College.
Joe Thalheimer is the director of emergency management at UCF.
Alan Parker is the owner of Parker Creative.
Chase Williams is a managing partner at Market My Market.
Melissa (Phillips) Cary is the senior lease administrator for Warby Parker.
2004 Jason Armbruster made and donated face shields across Florida using a 100-watt laser. Jason Cabrera ’06MS is a regional director for the Massachusetts Department of Revenue. Annika Matos won an Addy award for her work on the children’s video series Carmen Sandiego’s Fearless Kids Around the World. She is a designer at Pearson.
2006 Arielle Capuano was named a 2019 SHE-roe honoree by WestCare Florida. She is a founding partner at Levinson & Capuano. Horacio Carias was promoted to senior quantitative portfolio manager at Orion Portfolio Solutions in Charlotte, NC.
2009 Eric DeSalvo won a SPORTY for Best in Communications and Public Relations from the Greater Orlando Sports Commission. He is the assistant athletics director of #content for UCF Athletics. Cristina Venturini is the director of marketing and sales at the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra.
Jonathon Little earned an MBA from the University of Florida.
Jennifer (Termini) Keefe is a detention deputy for St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office.
2012 Bryan Gollins is a product line manager for Puma and lives in Nuremberg, Germany.
Benjamin Latimer is a physician assistant at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, FL. Jessica (Manemeit) Salgado is director of sales at White Lodging. Sarah Mears is the assistant publicity director for the Palm Beach Kennel Club. She is also the president of the Palm Beach County Attractions Association.
2013 Paul Bernier is the assistant director of front office for Kimpton Hotel Van Zandt in Austin, TX. Cody Cervellera is a financial advisor at Edward Jones. William Furiosi ’14MAT was named Seminole County Public Schools’ teacher of the year. Kaitlin (Hopkins) Gaset is a police officer with the Brookhaven Police Department in Atlanta. Brianna LaBarge earned a project management certification and was named president-elect of the Society of Women Engineers, Columbia River Section. She is a process engineer at Nike. Dillon McColgan is an associate at ShuffieldLowman, where he practices fiduciary litigation, commercial and civil litigation, and employment law. Andrea Portillo Medeiros is director of programs, policy and membership for the National Osteoporosis Foundation. Saumya Sinha is an Apex developer with Rexel.
2014 Ashley Delgado is an account manager for global events at HelmsBriscoe. Jessica Moser is a procurement manager at Spectrum. Amanda Palmeira is an attorney at the New Hampshire Office of the Attorney General.
2015 Osman Canizales Jr. is a business systems analyst at Gartner.
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Ryan Kirshenbaum is in-house counsel for Nebraska Methodist Health System. Abby Lemay is the executive director of Rebuilding Together of Central Florida. Marc Lipnicki is an inventory manager for Walmart Fulfillment Services. Paula Llanos is a client services administrator at Mad Hat Creative. Julie McHaffie earned a JD from Stetson University in May. Adam Militello completed 25 months as company commander for the 100th Training Division’s Leader Development in Fort Knox, KY. David Rodriguez is a systems engineer at Boeing.
2016 Amanda Govin is an associate specializing in tax planning at Dean Mead. Shaun Nebenzahl is the owner of Dalsimer Atlas, an event production company in Deerfield Beach, FL. Scott Peters earned a master’s degree in history from Southern New Hampshire University. Jonathan Remy is a research analyst for Blank Rome.
Jordan Hook is director of sponsorships and events at Oviedo-Winter Springs Regional Chamber of Commerce. Andrew Whitman is the front of house manager at Hershey Entertainment & Resorts.
2019 Rachael Beadle is an industrial engineer at Lockheed Martin. Kadi Gashlin is a flight controller at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. Kendra Hazen and husband Mark Barnes ’13 own The Donut Patch in Oviedo, FL. Rachel Ilardi is a communications specialist at Curley & Pynn, a public relations firm in Maitland, FL. Sarah Kelliher is a communications specialist at Curley & Pynn. Josh Lecas is a software engineer at Northrop Grumman. Meghan McNeil is an events coordinator for the city of Winter Springs, FL. Nerissa Rampersad is a conference strategist at AdventHealth. Lucy Wilk is a mechanical designer at Hanson Professional Services.
2017
Brianna Williams is a medical records manager at the Turks and Caicos Islands Ministry of Health.
Asad Ahmad is an advisory staff auditor at Deloitte and obtained his CPA license in February.
Hailey Williams is a referral coordinator at First Choice Pediatrics.
Luke Kranz is a business intelligence and analytics engineer for the Foundation For The Carolinas. Brooke Tuerlings is a conference coordinator for the University of New England. Julia VandeGraaf is a global response coordinator for Exlog Global.
2018 Kryslynn Collazo teaches sixth grade at Renaissance Charter School at Chickasaw Trail in Orlando. Guillaume de Vauxclairs is an account developer at Shift Technology in Paris.
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2020 Zoe Hammerschmidt is an associate broadcast producer at Area 23, an advertising agency in New York City. Daniella Medina is a digital producer for the USA Today Network. Cynthia Moffett is a communications specialist at Curley & Pynn. Travis Parrish is serving as a parent and family engagement liaison at Lake Silver Elementary School.
In Memoriam
Robert “Bob” Case ’70 died April 9, 2020. After graduating as a charter class member of then-Florida Technological University, Carter went on to work at Sears, Roebuck and Co., before becoming president and CEO of All American Termite & Pest Control, Handex Consulting & Remediation, R B Case Consulting and Demetree Global. He received the 2019 Lifetime Achievement Award from the College of Business for his lifelong commitment to UCF. Jeffrey Perdue ’89 died on February 23, 2020. He was the founder and owner of both All-Florida Mortgage Centers and Orlando Home Mortgages. Hope Wehrle ’02 ’04MS died March 9, 2020. Benjamin Carpenter ’17 died December 1, 2019. He was an Imagineer at Walt Disney World as well as a member of Team USA for power wheelchair soccer, competing in 2014, 2017 and 2019. Prior to his death, Carpenter had been selected for the 2021 World Cup team.
ALUMNI AUTHORS Janene Cullen ’85 wrote Lead like a Master Gardener. Veronica (Edwards) Berry ’87 wrote Meliah, Job’s Wife: A Story of Healing, Hope, Temptation and Truth. Don Fesh ’92 wrote Sometimes You Have to Eat a Crap Sandwich: A Collection of Short Essays to Help Improve your Career Mileage. Deirdre Klein Ochipinti ’93 cowrote Super Alec’s Very Super Day: An Adoption Story.
Abner Jackson III ’06 wrote Through It All: Sanford Raised Me and ATL Saved Me. Stephanie Kostopoulos ’08 wrote Discovering My Scars: Learning to Take a Giant Leap Forward, while Taking Two Steps Back. Amy (Shanks) McConnell ’08 wrote Second Chances. Christina C. C. Willis ’09MS ’13PhD wrote Sustainable Networking for Scientists and Engineers.
Tamara Lawyer ’96 co-wrote Love on the Edge of Danger: A Pandemic Romance Collection.
Beth Fiedler ’11PhD edited Three Facets of Public Health and Paths to Improvements: Behavior, Culture and Environment.
Gary Roen ’97 wrote Slotski’s World, Journey and The Forgotten Father: Coping with Grief.
Miranda Katz ’15 wrote Because One Day You’ll Read This and Continuously Coping.
Trina Emler ’05 co-wrote An Education Crisis Is a Terrible Thing to Waste: How Radical Changes Can Spark Student Excitement and Success.
Melissa (Izzo) Edwards ’18 wrote I See You: A Survival Guide for New Nurses and a Memoir of My First Year as a Graduate Nurse in the ICU.
JOIN THE UCF ALUMNI BOOK CLUB Add your book, connect and enjoy books by Knights through online discussions, virtual gatherings and events. ucfalumni.com/alumnibookclub
ARMOR UP, PEGASUS
Frankie Catalfumo ’13 Infection control epidemiologist, The Johns Hopkins Hospital
Steven Lerner ’13 Senior emergency program planner, Seminole County Government
Peri Chajet ’16 Senior account executive, Digitas Health
Blake Lynch ’14 Care coordinator, Harborview Medical Center; founder, NurseCon and Nurse Blake
Brittany Dansereau ’13 Corporate marketing manager, Miller’s Ale House Jenna (Doerfler) Kelly ’13 ’14MBA ’15MS Senior manager of events, United States Tennis Association
In recognition of Knights age 30 or younger who have made a significant impact in their profession or their community. Congratulations, 2020 recipients! To read more, visit bit.ly/ucf-2020-30under30.
Andrew Aboujaoude ’18 Medical student, University of Texas Jessica Aksu ’13 ’18MBA Business development manager, T&G Constructors Caroline Castille ’15 Chief executive officer, Clickable Impact; founder, bSteps Dancewear
Juan Escobar ’12 ’14MA Associate director of residential life and explorations, Rollins College Brandon Fair ’13 Associate, Edward Jones Tacko Fall ’19 Center, Boston Celtics Angelica Garcia ’17MS Simulation and software engineer, NASA’s Johnson Space Center Sarah Goldman ’14 District aide, Florida House of Representatives Michael Herman ’13 Director of construction and store development, Starbucks Christopher Jones ’13 Senior copywriter, Publix
Paula Machado ’12 Founder and president, Fire Ant Communications Santiago Martinez ’14 Three-time Colombian National Wrestling Champion; Realtor, Keller Williams Marsha Mena ’15 ’16MSW Clinical coordinator, Hispanic Family Counseling
PROTECT YOURSELF AND OTHERS WITH UCF FACE COVERINGS. Knight-owned business Rock ’Em Socks offers several designs to choose from. Proceeds benefit the UCF Student Emergency Fund.
Kristina Merritt ’12 Manager of legal services, Checkers Drive-In Restaurants
Masks start at $14
Michael Metzner ’16MD Associate producer, medical advisor and surgery fellow, ABC Studios Alexis Neigel ’15MS ’17PhD Senior design researcher, Microsoft Nikunj Patel ’17 ’19MSAE Mars Science Laboratory flight director, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Andrea Piazza ’19MA Artistic director, Chance 2 Dance Jonell Radabaugh ’15 Associate project manager, Walt Disney World Amanda Schultz ’17 NICU clinical nurse, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Emily Smith ’13 Florida director of sales and events, Tavern Restaurant Group Jade (Taylor) Brown ’14 Assistant director for inclusion and campus involvement, Rollins College
“Having the opportunity to listen to people and their stories inspires me daily. Their perspectives, viewpoints and background all deserve to be heard and respected,” says Jade (Taylor) Brown ’14, assistant director for inclusion and campus involvement at Rollins College.
KNIGHTS!
Alexandra Thompson ’13 Marketing manager, UCF Online James Weschler ’14 Project lead, Chick-fil-A Corporate
Purchase at bit.ly/ucf-rock-em
SHARE YOUR NEWS Send us your announcements and high-resolution photos (minimum 3 megapixels, 300 dpi). Submissions are included as space permits. Class notes may be edited for length and clarity, and may be published in any medium. WEB
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Pegasus Class Notes P.O. Box 160046 Orlando, FL 32816-0046
PHONE
407.823.2586 U C F. E D U / P E G A S U S | 4 1
Weddings & Births 1
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Wesley Brown ’99 and husband Shanon Larimer adopted Charles Michael on September 12, 2018.
17 Lindsey (Stein) ’09 and Adam Weinberg ’09 welcomed Madisyn Blake on April 2, 2020.
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Jenn Brinn ’03 and wife Annie welcomed Ryman James on July 19, 2019.
18 Barbara (Helmly) ’10 and Ryan Luering ’06 welcomed Alexander Grant on April 30, 2020.
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Bree (Adamson) ’04 and Brett Watson ’09 welcomed Beckett Alan on April 24, 2020.
achael (Moose) ’10 ’15MEd and 19 R Michael Hatfield ’09 welcomed Avery Mae on February 20, 2020.
Kristen (Winne) ’04 and David Rhodes ’06 ’11MS welcomed Sage Eleanor on December 10, 2019. Jacey (Brown) Poppell ’05 ’07MA and husband Mike welcomed Cole Michael on December 4, 2019. Justin Pollack ’05 and wife Lindsey welcomed Samuel on November 30, 2019. 4 Kristin (Rogers) Thwaites ’05 and husband Andy welcomed Ava Rose on October 7, 2019.
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Connie (Griesemer) Little ’11 and husband Jonathan welcomed Liam Isaac on February 19, 2020. 20 Katie Hausman ’11 married D. Josh Grace on February 29, 2020. 21 Cristina Keeth ’11 married John Peckham ’15 on January 25, 2020. 22 Lauren (Rauch) ’11 and David Rathjens ’12 welcomed Olivia on January 1, 2020.
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hristina (Amalfitano) ’06 ’15MS and C Matt Abbene ’07 ’15MS welcomed Dean Louis on April 23, 2020.
23 Kyle Westfall ’11 married Michelle Russo ’12 on February 1, 2020.
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Natalie (Kalman) ’06 and Richard Dickinson ’10 welcomed Catalina Daisy on April 9, 2019.
24 Brittany ’11 and Greg Wheatley ’11 welcomed twins Reece and Rylan on December 16, 2019.
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Krista Kent ’06 ’07MS married Marc Zoellner on May 18, 2019.
25 Adam Zicha ’11 and wife Melissa welcomed James Marshall on January 29, 2020.
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Laura Last ’06 ’11 and husband Jeff Harbour welcomed Fox on October 3, 2019.
26 Luisa Fishman ’12 married Spencer Sadkin ’07 on January 18, 2020.
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Krista Thompson ’06 ’08MNM welcomed Milana Grace on July 7, 2019.
27 Kathryn (Fortin) ’12 and Kyle Stoodt ’11 welcomed Clark Avery on October 1, 2019.
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10 Karen Torres ’06 married Anthony Halmon ’12 on November 10, 2019.
28 Amanda Gonzalez ’12 married Matthew Williamson ’10 on February 14, 2020.
11 Renee (Toupin) Torpy ’07 and husband Douglas welcomed Victoria Iris on October 14, 2019.
Nina Morgan ’12 married David Whisenant ’13MS on July 18, 2020.
12 Tatiana Lopez-Sparks ’08 and husband Matthew welcomed Eliana Victoria on October 28, 2019.
29 Taisha (O’Connor) ’12 and Evan Easterling ’12 welcomed Emerie on November 13, 2019.
13 Karen (Northey-Boquin) ’08 and Stephen Ruff ’08 welcomed Noah Gabriel on July 5, 2019.
30 Tiffany (Smith) ’12 and Nathan Ward ’12 welcomed Carter on February 19, 2020.
14 Christina Buzzella ’09 married Kevin Gangi on February 2, 2020.
31 Alicia Ebersole ’13 married Matthew Murphy on September 29, 2019.
15 Hye Jung Kim ’09 married DJ Tano on March 21, 2020.
32 Christopher Garcia ’13 and wife Reagan welcomed Callie Elizabeth on September 17, 2019.
16 Jerrica Schwartz ’09 married Jason Zimmerman ’09 on September 29, 2018.
33 Kaitlin Hopkins ’13 married David Gaset ’14 on February 18, 2020.
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34 Michael Jones ’13 and wife Jacquelyn welcomed Noah Michael on November 11, 2019.
50 Peri Chajet ’16 married Brandon Silverman ’14 on February 8, 2020.
35 Yoon (Kang) ’13 and Eric Smith ’10 welcomed Hazel Eunwoo on June 16, 2020.
51 Lisette (Duran) ’16 ’19 and Jonny Grymes ’17 welcomed Alejandra on February 14, 2020.
36 Charlie Luke ’13 married Reginald Guillaume ’13 on September 14, 2019.
52 Lauryn McGregor ’16 ’20MS married Phillip Lanigan ’16 on April 3, 2020.
37 Andrea Portillo ’13 married Timothy Medeiros ’12 on September 21, 2019.
53 Jocelin Adona ’17 married Branden Morona ’17 on January 10, 2020.
38 Jessica (Tedesco) ’13 and Michael Pellerin ’11 ’13 welcomed Amelia Arland on November 27, 2019.
54 Valerie Bestor ’17 married Luke Short on September 1, 2019.
39 Alexandra Dubois ’14 married John Silva ’15 on January 19, 2020.
Lindsay (Bordenkircher) ’17 and Andrew Toelle ’17 welcomed Hannah on October 2019.
Ellisa Foerster ’14 ’15 married Ryan Kirshenbaum ’15 on November 2, 2019.
Stephanie Cornejo ’17 ’18MS married Emmanuel Francois on October 27, 2019.
40 Elizabeth Goldinger ’14 ’20MS and Casey Miville ’15 welcomed Edison Casey on September 25, 2019.
55 Beverly De Marco ’17 ’19MA married Benjamin Lord ’17 on December 14, 2019.
41 Tiffany Hsieh ’14 married Ryan Ayres ’16 on February 8, 2020.
56 Michelle Frangione ’17 married Austin Roessel ’17 ’18MS on August 4, 2019.
42 Alicia (Kapusta) ’14 and Clayton Revels ’14 welcomed Emilia Rose on March 23, 2020.
57 Stephen Brandt ’18 and wife Naomi welcomed Alexandria Grace on November 23, 2019.
43 Nora McGowan ’14 married Neal Surrena ’16 on November 16, 2019.
58 Haley Hohnhorst ’18 and husband Steven Wilson welcomed Michael Karl Francis on July 22, 2020.
aitlyn (Sweeney) ’14 and David 44 K Janosik ’05 ’18MBA welcomed Nathan Corbett on February 9, 2020.
59 Anna Parnham ’18 married Victor Nguyen ’17 on February 22, 2020.
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45 Jenna Baldwin ’15 married Shaun Milosevich ’15 on February 23, 2020. 46 Carly Gourley ’15 married Zach Kleiman ’14 on November 3, 2019. 47 Ellis Hartley ’15 married Sarah Pierce on March 17, 2020. 48 Helena (Hawn) ’15 and Theodore Perry ’13 welcomed Hunter on September 18, 2019. 49 Hannah Reagan ’15 and Caleb Grady ’15 welcomed Harper on October 24, 2019.
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Heriberto Rivera-Beltran ’18MS married Allister Lenn on February 20, 2020. 60 Rachel Adler ’19 married Nathan O’Donnell on January 4, 2020. Sarah Boogaerts ’19 married Jake Bateman on January 11, 2020. 61 Heather Cohen ’19MA married Eric Stanley ’10 ’18MS on January 19, 2020. 62 Jay Hollman ’19 married Whitney Agee on July 3, 2020. 63 Guy Swenson ’20EdD married David Brown on November 9, 2019.
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Why I _____________________ BY DON HARRELL I am a descendant of enslaved Africans. As an African American, I celebrate the heritage created by my ancestors within the context of their resilience and struggle for survival, liberation and civil rights. Heritage is the measure of self that has been passed down from generation to generation. It dictates how we look at and relate to the world. My heritage is heavily reliant on cultural memory — the link between the past, present and future. Though I was born in America and grew up in Virginia, I share 93 percent of my DNA with the people of West Africa and the Southern Bantu, which may explain my fascination with African culture and my lifelong preoccupation with it. My wife, Tutu, is of Nigerian ancestry with a royal lineage that hearkens back through many generations of African history. Tutu possesses uncanny cultural memory that we have been able to put to good use in our efforts to serve society. Together, we embarked on a cultural journey more than three and a half decades ago to celebrate and share both our individual and common heritage through the intersection of arts and activism. When I asked my wife why she celebrates her heritage, she replied, “I celebrate my heritage because it is my life.” That is an answer consistent with African thought and practice, both traditionally and contemporarily, as the music, dance and art of Africans represent their very existence — and their love for their heritage shines through like the sparkle of a diamond. When we founded Orisirisi African Folklore, our performing arts and arts education company, Tutu showed me that the celebration of her African heritage was indeed her life. She has traveled far and wide to share her heritage through singing, dancing, storytelling, drumming and fashion out of love for humanity, her sense of duty and her desire to teach others. In the same way, I celebrate my African American heritage because it, too, is my life. Through celebration, African American heritage sustains itself, which is one of its abiding characteristics. The celebration is key to
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both its survival and the realization of its ideals. My cause became to uplift African Americans by reacquainting them with our African culture, while enhancing their sense of pride in their cultural roots and using my skills as a storyteller and drummer to effect positive social change. When we started this husband-and-wife team, we did so as volunteers presenting programs for Brownie troops, senior citizen gatherings, places of worship, schools and libraries. For three years it was a performance here and a class there, before we formalized our celebrations of African and African American heritage into Orisirisi African Folklore. After doing so, it became quite evident to us that we were celebrating our heritage not only because of our lives, but because it affected the lives of the thousands of people young and old who celebrated with us, including the audience members of the approximately 12,000 shows we had the honor of presenting at Epcot from 2000 to 2009. I have taught in the classroom for 20 years — 11 at UCF — but also outside the classroom for all my adult life through expanded venues at festivals, museums, conferences, radio and TV programs, and anywhere else my wife and I can share the love of our culture. Through the years, we love that our African and African American adventure has been rooted in the traditions mentioned above and include a healthy dose of the African obligatory audience participation. I celebrate my heritage because of those who came before me, a strong and majestic people. And now this culture is our life — and the heritage that we’re striving to keep alive. To hear Harrell perform stories from African folklore, visit ucf.edu/pegasus.
Don Harrell is an adjunct in UCF’s Africana Studies program, where he is currently teaching Evolution of Hip-Hop. His company’s name, Orisirisi (pronounced O-re-she-re-she), comes from the Yoruba word meaning “different things.”
NONPROFIT ORGANIZATION US POSTAGE PA I D ORLANDO FL PERMIT 3575
NOT EVERYTHING THAT IS FACED CAN BE CHANGED, BUT NOTHING CAN BE CHANGED UNTIL IT IS FACED. JAMES BALDWIN