WEDNESDAY
ja nua ry
PAGE 7
25, 2012
the daily orange
the sweet stuff in the middle
Documenting dreams
s e x a n d h e a lt h
Say ‘No thank you’ to baby mama drama
Collaboration between two SU professors produces insight into local school system
IONA HOLLOWAY
U
just do it
nless you like to wake up to a baby screaming at 4 a.m., casual sex is the way to go: no consequences. However, 34 percent of American women are pregnant at least once before they are 20, according to the 2005 Kaiser Family Study of Sex on TV. So here are seven ways to be down to f**k, ensuring that “she” isn’t condemned to nine months of beached whale-dom, and “he” doesn’t owe 21 years of child support to Ugly Betty from Shaw Hall. 1) The Condom: Don’t know that person’s first name? You’ve got to glove the love. If that idiot you met at the bar says, “I don’t use condoms,” just hope you aren’t smashed enough to agree. Condoms may make everything a bit, well, muffled, but unless you both have a blue ribbon saying you don’t have The Clap, suck it up and stick it on. According to americanpregnancy.org, condoms are 98 percent effective and protect you from STDs. 2) The Pill: Someone calls Haley Bomboy, a junior communication and rhetorical studies major, at 9 p.m. every night. It’s not her overprotective mother. It’s “Baby,” Bomboy’s pill alarm. The small, round and mighty daily pill stops ovaries from letting eggs loose by releasing the hormones estrogen, progestin or both. The pill is 99 percent effective when taken correctly. However, being overweight, vomiting and some antibiotics can affect efficiency, according to Planned Parenthood’s website. 3) The Vaginal Ring (NuvaRing): If you don’t want your own Blue Ivy Carter, you should’ve put a ring on it: once a month for three weeks to be precise. NuvaRing sits inside the vagina, releases the same hormones as the pill, and makes your uterus unfriendly for any eggs with ideas. When used correctly, according to nuvaring.com, NuvaRing has the same bonuses as the pill: improved skin, fewer cramps and less PMS. 4) The Implant (Implanon): Inserted under the skin on your arm, this small matchstick-sized device releases progestin. Nearly 600 women using Implanon reported unwanted pregnancies to the United Kingdom’s Medicine and Health
SEE HOLLOWAY PAGE 9
(top left) carly reeve | staff photographer (bottom left and right) jackie barr | staff photographer (CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT) Susan Hynds, professor emeritus of the School of Education, and television, radio and film professor Larry Elin created a documentary that explores the education system’s effect on African-American males.
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By Ian Phillips STAFF WRITER
mong the statistics displayed in the opening minutes of “Black Males/Black Dreams: Climbing to the Mountaintop,” this one is most unsettling: more AfricanAmerican men, 775,000, are in U.S. prisons than U.S. colleges, 680,000. While it presents these hard facts, the documentary focuses on success stories rather than the failures to come out of the school system. The film was co-produced by television, radio and film professor Larry Elin and professor emeritus of the School of Education Susan Hynds and made only with the equipment available in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. It will make its premiere in the Joyce Hergenhan
Auditorium at 7 p.m. Wednesday. It deals with problems that everyone knows exist, but few people truly want to acknowledge. The documentary’s message speaks at both a local and a national level. Despite the election of Barack Obama as the first African-American president of the United States, age-old racial barriers have yet to be broken. African-American males still struggle to get a complete education, the film explains. A majority of students drop out and end up in prison, which illustrates “the school-to-prison pipeline.” The documentary is not about the people who become these statistics but rather those who beat them and those who are helping to reverse them altogether. It features interviews from now
grown-up former students of the Syracuse education system. The most prominent is Carlos Wallace, now an educator. His story of struggle and hard-earned success encapsulates what all teachers and students should aspire to attain. While several movies and documentaries have explored this subject matter, “Black Males/Black Dreams” stands out by tackling the issues at hand from all sides. Rather than presenting a one-sided indictment of the parents, the teachers or the education system, it explores how all of these factors can make or break a child. It shows that success for the AfricanAmerican male not only depends on a combination of self-motivation and guidance from good role models, but also how students can motivate
themselves. The documentary also taps into what exactly constitutes a positive role model. Maybe one of the most interesting discoveries here is that women specifically make the best teachers for male African-American students. This conclusion stems from the many factors of black culture further explored in the movie. Wallace’s teacher, Mary McCrone, who had the biggest influence on his decision to become an educator, is interviewed prominently. “Black Males/Black Dreams” offers no absolute solutions, but it should still be considered valuable and uplifting. By focusing on the positives as opposed to the negatives, the documentary centers on hopeful futures. iaphilli@syr.edu
Q&A with co-producers of insighftul education documentary By Ian Phillips STAFF WRITER
The creators of “Black Males/Black Dreams: Climbing to the Mountaintop,” Susan Hynds and Larry Elin, talked about their collaboration, the challenges of making a movie without a budget and their passion for the subject.
The Daily Orange: When did this
project start and how did you get involved? Susan Hynds: The project started about six years ago when I was thinking I would be retiring from the university. I wanted to take a few classes, so I audited a class with Larry Elin. I decided I’d want to make documentary films instead of retiring. I made a short 15-minute documentary about Wallace
and McCrone. So we talked about it and decided that the issue of AfricanAmerican males in society was a much larger issue than these two people.
What was the most difficult part of making this movie? I think because we had no budget, we had to work to get footage. For instance, we couldn’t pay for B-roll. We wanted to put a CNN clip in, but
we couldn’t pay for it. It was $180 a minute. It was difficult because we had to make all of the film ourselves. We had to collaborate and because of that it took us four years.
What do you believe students and educators can get out of this movie? I think we need to look carefully at those kids we see standing on street
SEE Q &A PAGE 9