Alternative Service Break returns for spring break 2019

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TECHNICIAN

PAGE 8 • THURSDAY, MARCH 7, 2019

Alternative Service Break returns for spring break 2019

Bryan Cambra

Staff Writer

With spring break just around the corner, students and staff alike have been planning out how they’ll spend the week, whether it be vacationing or taking time to relax at home. For some, community service and outreach is to their tastes, and Alternative Service Break offers plenty of programs for that.

Alternative Service Break is a student-led program coordinated by Leadership and Civic Engagement. Every fall and spring break, student volunteers and team leaders embark on trips to engage with communities and assist them in various ways, addressing everything from housing and food insecurity to LGBTQ+ issues.

Over this year’s spring break, ASB has students participating in more than 20 trips, each tackling different issues in unique locations. The sites can be local to North Carolina or as far away as Trinidad and Tobago.

“A question we often ask ourselves is ‘How can you use the knowledge you’ve gained at NC State and utilize your life experiences to cultivate growth?’” said Adam Culley, assistant director of Leadership and Civic Engagement. “ASB provides its participants with the perfect opportunity to answer that.”

Culley spoke about his previous experiences going on an ASB trip.

“For me, my first experience was probably the most impactful,” Culley said. “It made me realize the little ways I can make an impact. It doesn’t have to be some grand gesture in order to help someone.”

Culley, who has been participating in ASB since he was an undergrad, also advises the service trip to Hoonah, Alaska. For its duration, volunteers engage with the native Tlingit community by working in public school settings, the Boys & Girls Club and the area’s senior center.

The Alaska service trip is one of the most popular, and is now more of a tradition for both sides. Each year, the Tlingit people welcome NC State’s volunteers with open arms. While they engage with the community, students gain cultural lessons from them and knowledge about the Tlingit language and community.

The team doesn’t take their positive interactions with the people for granted. As Culley mentioned, rather than having a liaison from the area to coordinate trips with, the Hoonah partnership is based on community relationships to ensure that the volunteers respect the boundaries the people have in place. Every site is handled the same way.

According to Culley, participants of ASB trips have always been careful enough to ensure that they haven’t had any negative impacts on the communities they visit. Each year, they go back over every program with insight from members of each community to make sure they’re utilizing their resources in the best manner.

“We want to know the best ways to be in partnership and service of these communities,” Culley said. “We always go back and evaluate partnerships to ensure that we’re succeeding in doing both of those as efficiently as possible.”

Some ASB teams delve into sustainability issues as well. For example, the Trinidad and Tobago trip, whose team is composed mostly of students in the Goodnight Scholars Program, has a site located near the Arima River and focuses on engaging local schools and community organizations in environmental education.

“My favorite part was experiencing the biodiversity of Trinidad,” said Jeremy Park, a fourthyear studying foreign languages and literature and computer science, who has volunteered at the site in the past. “The hundreds of hummingbirds, the swamp boat rides, swimming in a waterfall; it was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had with nature.”

Though the registration dates for next year’s trips have not been released yet, information and applications for ASB’s trips can be found on Leadership and Civic Engagement’s website.

CONTRIBUTED BY ADAM CULLEY/LEADERSHIP AND CIVIC ENGAGEMENT

Arts & Entertainment

TECHNICIAN

PAGE 9 • THURSDAY, MARCH 7, 2019

Women’s Center hosts program on masculinity

ELIJAH MORACCO-SCHELP/ARCHIVE The Masculinities Project meets in the Women’s Center in Talley Student Union.

Sana Sheikh

Correspondent

An event series being hosted at NC State’s Women’s Center is working to bring focus on the perception of gender in today’s society.

The Masculinities Project is an ongoing program hosted by the Women’s Center. Consisting of several different sessions over the course of the semester, it aims to define and discuss the topic of masculinity, including how it came to be and how it has impacted society.

“Within the Women’s Center, part of what we do is working with survivors of sexual violence,” said Carlyn WrightEakes, the rape prevention education coordinator at the Women’s Center. “We’re also working on expanding what the center is known for. We want it to not feel like a space that’s exclusively for women-identified students.”

The project has also spawned a cohort for students to discuss issues raised by the project. The group, which currently consists of 12 students, meets every other Thursday of each month and participates in written self-reflections during off weeks.

“It started to look at the development of masculinity and understanding of how masculinity impacts student experiences,” Wright-Eakes said. “We’re looking at it from different angles of how that’s related to interpersonal violence and sexual violence within the work that we do. We’re also looking at how we can bring more people into the Women’s Center by looking at masculinity and kind of understanding the creation of masculinity and femininity as opposing.”

Bradford Hill, an academic success counselor and one of the key individuals who worked to make the Masculinities Project Cohort come to life, shed some light on how he views the program.

“For me personally, I see it as an opportunity to have really nuanced conversations around the topic of masculinity,” Hill said.

Hill also spoke about how students have been personally impacted by the cohort.

“I’ve seen a lot of worldview shifting and worldview widening, which I think is really good when we’re talking about trying to understand people better and understand human interaction a lot better,” Hill said. “I think these opportunities through content and through exploration through the writing prompts, I’ve seen a lot of that from the students and from myself.”

The Masculinities Project Cohort offers students an opportunity to discuss what masculinity looks like in 2019, as well as what has shaped society’s modern-day depictions of masculinity.

“I think it’s bringing the opportunity to kind of question what’s going on around them,” Hill said. “Kind of evaluate and think critically about what’s happening right now in society and what’s happening right now on campus, and how views of masculinity or attitudes related to masculinity are impacting relationships, interpersonal dynamics and the way people interact with each other.”

The Masculinities Project Cohort explores all different aspects of masculinity and gives students a chance to evaluate the topic of masculinity, including what roles they play with regard to masculinity.

“We started looking at gender and definitions and what we think masculinity is,” Wright-Eakes said.

From there, the cohort has gone on to discuss how masculinity developed in different cultures and how the ideals of masculinity have developed over the course of history within these cultures and with regard to colonization.

“We started with looking at images and descriptions of groups from around the world, precolonial, that had communities that had third genders or genderqueer identities,” Wright-Eakes said.

The Masculinities Project Cohort has also explored topics such as masculinity and power, including what the formation of masculinity looks like within modern day society.

“The creation of the ‘other’ has very much been what has formed masculinity, even though the idea of masculinity has shifted over time,” Wright-Eakes said.

Wright-Eakes confirmed that the Masculinities Project Cohort will happen again during the next school year. Those interested in participating in this project, keep a lookout for emails and advertisements to start popping up again at the end of fall 2019.

More information on the Masculinity Project Cohort can be found at Women’s center website.