features
F E AT U R E S
TUESDAY, JANUARY 31, 2017
PAGE 7
University behind on recovery dorms
Retiring professor receives award
Unlike nearby schools, Temple does not provide sober housing. By MEGHAN COSTA For The Temple News
O
n the morning of his brother’s 29th birthday, Sean Garraty awoke to find two police officers knocking at his door. The police arrested Garraty, then a sophomore social work major, for selling prescription pills to an undercover police officer in Glenolden, Pennsylvania. He had been using pills since high school and stopped using substances before he enrolled at Temple, but he eventually slipped back into addiction during his freshman year. “This was my rock bottom,” Garraty said. “While I sat in jail, I knew that this was not my purpose in life.” Garraty couldn’t complete the Spring 2014 semester because of his arrest. There was only one month of classes left before finals. Many universities like Penn State, Rutgers and Drexel offer recovery housing for students like Garraty. Not all recovery residencies are the same, but most include regular 12-step meetings, live-in recovery support staff, regular drug testing and therapy or counseling services. Temple does not offer a residence specifically for students in recovery, but many students believe the university should. Garraty started using pills again after drinking with friends who lived on Main Campus. Despite the fact that his friends lived in a residence hall, they were still able to sneak in alcohol, and Garraty said it was very easy to get pills. He could walk down any random street off Main Campus and find someone selling drugs, he said. Garraty transferred to Temple from Delaware County Community College in 2013. He had just left rehab at Mirmont Treatment Center in Media, Pennsylvania, where he recovered from an addiction to Percocet, Xanax and Adderall. After he served four months in the George W. Hill Correctional Facility,
RECOVERY | PAGE 13
Marina Angel will retire in June after half a century of fighting for women’s rights. BRIANNA SPAUSE/THE TEMPLE NEWS Ben Wong, a 2011 communications alumnus, explores an empty lot at 10th Street and Cecil B. Moore Avenue.
HIGHLIGHTING PHILLY THROUGH THE LENS A 2011 communications alumnus’ Instagram “brotherlylost” has more than 16,000 followers. By ALEXIS ANDERSON For The Temple News Ben Wong isn’t interested in taking photos of Boathouse Row or South Street. He said he’d rather take photographs of the “underbelly of Philly.” Wong, a 2011 communications alumnus, hails from Collegeville, Pennsylvania. “I never really had anything interesting out there for me to shoot,” he said. “But living in the city, you’re surrounded by it. You could stand in one spot for an hour and shoot a bunch of different things and get some cool shots.” This is evident in Wong’s popular Instagram account, “brotherlylost.” He posts photographs from obscure areas of the city, like an untended playground at 3rd and Lemon streets, a colorful mural at 8th and Thompson streets or a graffiti-marked payphone just north of Chinatown. “I followed a lot of Philly photographers ... and I felt like they all kind of shoot the same stuff,” Wong said. “I want to show that there’s more to Philly than just the cobblestone and all that.”
PHOTOGRAPHY | PAGE 11
BRIANNA SPAUSE /THE TEMPLE NEWS Wong photographs his reflection in a street art installation at 10th Street and Cecil B. Moore Avenue..
By PATRICK BILOW For The Temple News As a 20-year-old student at Columbia University Law School in the mid-1960s, Marina Angel stood in the office of Columbia’s Dean of Admissions and demanded the recognition of her female peers. Angel said she saw that women at Columbia University were graduating with less recognition than men despite the fact that they had similar, if not better grades. More than 50 years later, Angel continues to defend equal rights as a professor in the Beasley School of Law. After working for 39 years at the university, she is set to retire in June 2017. During her career, she researched and published more than 40 papers regarding women’s rights and the status of women in the law, some of which have been recognized and presented by the American Bar Association. “I have always fought against the injustice I see around me,” Angel said. Earlier this month, Angel received the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Lifetime Achievement Award — an honor that recognizes an individual who has had a distinguished career in teaching, service and scholarship for at least 20 years — at the Association of American Law Schools 111th Annual Convention in San Francisco. Angel is a friend of Ginsburg, and they were two of the few women who were law professors in New York City during the 1970s. Angel said she assumed a role as a “troublemaker” early in her career by shining a light on situations of which people were otherwise unaware. She said one of her research papers studied 200 Pennsylvania law firms and concluded that few women become an equity partner at their firm. In a separate study regarding women in legal education, Angel found it was becoming more difficult for women to
LAW | PAGE 12
Students travel to Iceland to shoot senior thesis film Eric Burleson and Conor O’Mara made a short dystopian film together their senior year. By PATRICK BILOW For The Temple News Along a coast dominated by black sand and rugged terrain, two senior film and media arts majors found the
setting for their thesis film: Iceland. Eric Burleson was the film’s writer and director, and Conor O’Mara, who has a concentration in cinematography, was the director of photography. Burleson and O’Mara spent two weeks around Laugarvatn, Iceland shooting scenes for their film, “Return Safely.” Burleson and O’Mara’s film is a fantasy, dystopian piece about a woman’s quest through a strange land. She is traveling to return a mysterious, sacred object to its home while encountering creatures that can not be found
in the real world. Each senior in the School of Theater, Film and Media Arts can produce a film that reflects what they learned during their time at Temple. Over the years, students have done their thesis films around the world, in India, South Africa, China and now Iceland, said Paul Swann, a film and media arts professor. “A thesis film demands vision, discipline and perseverance,” Swann said.
FILM | PAGE 9
COURTESY ERIC BURLESON Emily Ruth Johnson, a 2014 theater alumna, is the sole actress in the film “Return Safely” created by two film and media arts majors in Iceland.
AMBASSADOR | PAGE 8
LGBTQ | PAGE 8
WRITING | PAGE 11
A CAPELLA | PAGE 12
A 1966 accounting alumnus worked as a U.S. ambassador for nearly four decades.
Study abroad programs are working on making the international experience more inclusive for LGBTQ students.
Mary Gaitskill, a new creative writing professor and acclaimed author, will teach MFA writing workshops.
A new a capella group on campus performs a diverse array of music genres during its performances.