THE
CHARGER BULLETIN The official student newspaper of the University of New Haven since 1938. Volume 97, Issue 13| December 9, 2015 | West Haven, Conn.
CAMPUS
OPINION
MUSIC
FILM
Students danced the night away Dec.5 at the annual Snowball dance P.2
Staff writer Alessia lists 10 things she doesn’t want her family to ask over break? P.4
Check out The Charger Bulletin’s year in review Spotify Playlist P.8
Check out staff writer Hector’s review of the Good Dinosaur! P.9
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Crisis Explores a Century of Oppression By PAUL CARBONELLA
STAFF WRITER PCARB1@UNH.NEWHAVEN.EDU
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NAACP’s The Crisis magazine, a current-affairs journal hen playgoers filled featuring scholarly articles, Bucknall Theater the weekend poems, fiction, and plays dealof Dec.3, they had no idea they ing with issues of race since its genesis in 1910. The first scene were being sent to a different era. The University of New Ha- in Crisis, “A Sunday Morning in the South,” was written by ven Theater Program’s Crisis: Georgia Douglas Johnson in A Performance about Race in 1924. It’s an anti-lynching play America 1915-2015 explores about an African-American the disturbing history of Afriwoman, Sue Jones (Jazmin can-American oppression and JeanBaptiste), whose son, Tom exploitation over the last cen(Greg Pease), is unfairly artury. The production features rested and lynched in jail after performances, playwriting, being incorrectly identified as a choreography, scenic design, criminal. The scene is just one and original music created by UNH students, who successful- example of an all-too familiar ly translated the painful effects narrative where normal black families are torn apart because of racism into an immersive of racism. The ever-present theatrical experience. Crisis borrows its title from feeling of powerlessness was
By KARINA KRUL
Jonathis (Greg Pease), attempts conversation with an uninterested white student (Sarah Ferguson), who is continually dismissive and suspicious of his friendliness. The setting shifts to the same classroom in 2015, where a different black student (Don Scott) is met with the same disrespect by the Caucasian girl. Other student-devised sequences included “Sit-ins,” (devised by Ajia Colman, Joshua M. Dill, Dali Irizarry, and Rose-Emma Lambridis) which detailed a form of racial protest by the same name; “Prom and Chill?,” (Mallory Clayton, Zachary Fontanez, Krystal Kidd, and Bobby Vaccaro) which discussed a Georgia high
school, which held a segregated prom until 2013; and “Trumbull,” (Nadine Bourne, Zachary Fontanez, Jazmin JeanBaptiste, and Julian Paul) which explored an unexplained traffic stop by a white officer who questioned African American lawyer Alvin Penn (Miles Pease). The frustrating case led to the “Alvin Penn Act,” a bill expanding the collection and analysis of traffic stop data in Connecticut with the purpose of curbing racial profiling. The closing scenes of the show feature a minstrel show, performed by a white sorority girl at UCLA (Sarah Ferguson). Minstrel shows were a prejudiced form of theater in the Jim
Transforming Hate
STAFF WRITER KKRUL1@UNH.NEWHAVEN.EDU
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palpable to the audience as Tom was dragged offstage by two white policemen (Bobby Vaccaro and Julian Paul). Crisis then transcends the stage by employing “tour guides” (Mallory Clayton, Zachary Fontanez, Jazmin JeanBaptiste, Rose-Emma Lambridis, and Katie McGoff) who directed sections of the audience to different areas in Dodds Hall, which featured student-devised scenes. The first was “Bussing,” a piece dealing with racial division amongst black and white students in schools, which switches between eras to convey how little race relations have changed amongst American students. In the first half, Sal
n Thursday Dec. 3, “Speaking Volumes: Transforming Hate” opened at the Seton Art Gallery. “Speaking Volumes” is a sevenyear old exhibition that traveled to the University of New Haven from Iowa, and began even farther away, in Montana. Artists were given the opportunity to respond to white supremacists books to showcase the brutality and problems faced in today’s society and explore race relations around our country. Many incorporated the actual books into their art, while others pulled ideas and events from them to inspire change. The main theme of the artwork was community rebuilding and social recovery in the face of hatred and cruelty. The
exhibition represented 39 artists of various nationalities and races, all coming to together under the goal of promoting diversity and positivity in response to the recent hatred and violence this nation has experienced.
See CRISIS page 2
provide a vast pool of knowledge about many differing perspectives and opinions on the same nationwide issues. Laura Marsh, director of the Seton Art Gallery, believes it is for that reason that the exhibi-
“Speaking Volumes: Transforming Hate” Opens at the Seton Art Gallery The exhibition ran from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., right before the University’s production of Crisis: A Performance about Race in America opened in Bucknall Theatre. It worked in tandem with Crisis to highlight many of the same issues, using art to make people think about the societal issues the nation must deal with on a regular basis. The artist’s different backgrounds
tion is so powerful. “Presenting a show of this caliber, coming to us from Montana and Iowa, provides us with the opportunity to explore race relations in the south and north,” she said. “Our country is divided on many issues, and it is through art that new channels of communication can open up and inspire us to examine how See TRANSFORMING HATEpage2
“Speaking Volumes: Transformnig Hate” opened Thursday, Dec. 3 (Photo by Karina Krul)