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Get to know senior Vol Matteo Fago T H E

E D I T O R I A L L Y

Clarence Brown Theatre to close year with ‘classic’

Thursday, April 21, 2011

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Issue 65 I N D E P E N D E N T

PUBLISHED SINCE 1906

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http://utdailybeacon.com

Vol. 116 S T U D E N T

PM showers 30% chance of rain HIGH LOW 60 75

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Students share creative talent, offer advice Library-sponsored writing contest awards excellence in variety of literary categories Christopher Thomas Staff Writer The UT Creative Writing Program hosted a public reading on Tuesday evening for its graduate and undergraduate award-winning writers and poets. The event, co-sponsored by Writers in the Library, gave the select students an occasion to share their year’s work with peers and faculty. Each student read his or her own piece of work, which was given recognition based on the talent and proficiency of the work. The numerous list of awarded students included Tawnysha Greene, a second-year doctoral candidate in creative writing, Faith Barger, senior in graphic design with a minor in English, Cynthia Bentley, junior in creative writing, and Logan Murphy, junior in creative writing. Their personal stories, educational knowledge, student identity, memories of childhood and ambitions have crafted their identities as authors and in the same way acted as their artistic muses. For Tawnysha Greene, it was risk “My professor assigned a ‘secret story’ for me to write, meaning that I had to write a story unlike any that I had written before and that I would not normally present in a writing workshop,” Greene said. “She told me to take a risk, and ‘Eskimo Days’ and everything that I’ve written since then is the result.” As a doctorial candidate, Greene, who won second prize in graduate fiction for “Eskimo Days”, has focused her narrative voice specifically, but her collection of poems has been off her familiar path. “My academic focus is the coming-of-age story as told from the female voice,” she said. “My creative dissertation will be a novel-length manuscript tailored after one such coming-of-age story. The stories and poems that have placed in these awards are all part of the same series about a young girl and her childhood.” Greene has spent years developing her style, but in her case, sometimes a gamble can pay off. In her words, Greene’s works often focus on selfcontained vignettes. Greene is also published in several literary magazines including Grist: A Journal for Writers, Necessary Fiction and Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts. Her recommendation for aspiring writers is simple: “Tell the truth.” For Faith Barger, it is reality “I am inspired by real life and real people and …

complexity of relationships and capturing that in a way that communicates and relates to readers,” Barger said. Barger crafted her story, “Survivor’s Guilt,” which won the first-prize Eleanora Burke Award for Nonfiction, from her own experiences and memories from her high school. The people she knew are the characters of the narrative reality. “I decided to write about my best friend’s teen pregnancy, because she is a hilarious character that

profoundly affected the person I’ve grown into,” Barger said. As a graphic design major, Barger’s writing reflects the skills she has studied. “I’ve been told I use articulate, specific language, and I like to create really descriptive scenes so the audience can feel like they are right there with me in my experiences,” Barger said. “I try to make sure I always maintain a level of honesty and authenticity in my writing; that’s what’s most important to

Tara Sripunvoraskul • The Daily Beacon

Stephanie Riggs, senior in English, reads her work, “Out to Lunch,” during the UT Writing Prizes reading in McClung Tower on Tuesday, April 19. The event recognized the winners of the UT Creative Writing Program’s yearly writing contests. I knew would be entertaining to both read and write about, but more than that, I knew there was an accessibility and vulnerability in her character that almost everyone can relate to,” Barger said. The characters of Barger’s life have not only influenced her writing, but they’ve also influenced herself. “(My story) shows how the dynamics of our relationship changed as a result of her experience as a young mother and how growing up in a small town

me.” For Cynthia Bentley, it is perspective Bentley’s story, “When Peace Comes,” which won the second-prize Robert A. Burke Award for Fiction, focuses on the perspective of the narrator and the experience she has. “I’ve always wanted to write a story from a child’s perspective and one set during World War II, so I figured I could combine the two,” she said. “My

story takes place during World War II. The narrator, a young girl, is left with her older sister and mother after her father is drafted and dies in the war. Every event, whether mundane or tragic, is filtered through a young child’s mind.” Bentley draws upon perspectives in her everyday life: books she reads, music she hears and her family. “One day, a memory was sparked of my sister and I, as children, dancing around our coffee table in huge Garfield slippers and waving plastic fairy wands to the Andrews Sisters’ ‘Bei Mir Bist du Schoen,’” Bentley said. “The Andrews Sisters were popular in the 1940s. I wanted to try to write a story in a decade completely foreign to me.” Bentley also said that other writers influence her greatly. “I was very influenced by Sandra Cisneros’ ‘The House on Mango Street,’” she said. “Her writing style really stuck with me, and I wanted to try to put my own twist on her style for my own piece.” Bentley recommended that aspiring writers should read for inspiration. “All writers should read relentlessly,” she said. “Writers influence other writers. By imitating the writers you like, you will find your own unique voice and develop your own writing style.” For Logan Murphy, it is the raw experience “I wrote ‘Dive’ just after finishing reading Don DeLillo’s masterpiece novel, ‘White Noise,’” Murphy said. “My goal was to capture the vacant and often oblivious paths that people take through life. I hoped to frame the human condition in such a way that touched the raw core of what it means to be alive. Control, order, willful ignorance — I wanted to show just how these can lead to a destructive lifestyle.” Murphy, who won the first-place Bain-Swiggett Poetry Award for “Dive, a Sestina,” characterizes himself as a student of the postmodern genre. “I first picked up ‘Fight Club’ by Chuck Palahniuk,” Murphy said. “He has been my greatest inspiration, most especially in my fiction writing. His works still play the part of muse from time to time.” Poetry is not the only genre Murphy enjoys writing in, though. “I’ve also tried my hand at science fiction,” he said. “The man responsible for my becoming a writer in the first place is a science fiction author: Frank Herbert.” Murphy recommended reading “Fight Club,” known for its character rawness.

Students question task force report Kevin Huebschman Chief Copy Editor In 2010, Chancellor Jimmy Cheek commissioned a task force that was to evaluate the performance of the Baker Center, as well as make recommendations regarding the center’s future. The task force released its findings in March and, in the process, raised several concerns from those involved in or close to the Baker Center community. On Wednesday, four students with ties to the Baker Center — Meredith Whitfield, a student-employee at the center, Eric Dixon, sophomore in philosophy and global studies, Hadil Senno and Sarah Lucas, the latter three Baker Scholars — as well as Gavin Luter, a former employee of the center, met with Baker Center Director Carl Pierce and presented a rebuttal report, raising concerns they found with the task force’s original report. “We have kind of a twopart issue,” Whitfield, junior in history, said during the meeting. “The first part … is fundamentally philosophical, because the proposed mission in the task force report runs contrary to both the original mission, set forth by Sen. (Howard) Baker of the Baker Center itself and, following that, the practical implementation of that philosophy.” According to the students and Luter, the federal grant that currently funds the center clearly places student and civic engagement at the forefront of the center’s priorities. A shift in this philosophy, the students said, would create concerns, not only within the affected student body, but with those granting the Baker Center its funds. That shift, Luter said, George Richardson • The Daily Beacon would transition the center John Fischer, senior in electrical engineering, performs a 360-degree turn over a into more of a think tank, small jump outside Presidential Courtyard on Sunday, April 10.

specifically in the areas of energy, environmental and global security studies. “That’s something that was kind of concerning to us,” he said, “because some of the original nature of the Baker Center language is bipartisan in nature and promoting kind of bipartisan research about the policy process of democracy.” That bipartisan nature, Luter argued, cannot continue when the center is forced to focus on such sensitive topics as the three mentioned above. Senno followed Luter by describing the dangers the Baker Center would face if it narrowed its focus down to three subjects. “What was most concerning to me was this whole student engagement and civility part of the Baker Center,” Senno, senior in Spanish, said. “It’s been laid down in the foundation, and I feel like we’re losing sight of that with any recommendations that the task force has.” Senno did say that she agreed with the task force, in that the Baker Center needed to focus on increasing student engagement; however, she believed the report was contradictory in its suggestion, saying that the recommendations would drive students away both physically and philosophically. Decreased classroom sizes, as well as a reduction in the size of the museum located within the Baker Center, are both recommendations of the task force, and those reductions, Sanno said, would drive students away. Philosophically, narrowing the fields of study at the Baker Center would narrow the student body and the number of individuals willing to help the center, Sanno said, as well as harming external relationships the center has already established. Pierce, who made clear he

was not a stand-in for Cheek and was meeting with the students simply as the head of the Baker Center, responded to the students and Lutor’s raised concerns by first acknowledging that both sides held the Baker Center’s best interests in mind and then by thanking the group. “What you are doing here — and I value it very much — is you’re equipping me with, one, information and, two, ideas that I can use as I commence a continuation of a process,” by working with both the co-chairs (Tom Griscom, former press secretary for Baker, and John Scheb, head of the Department of Political Science) of the task force and with Cheek to determine the implications of the report, Pierce said. Pierce also asserted that how the task force’s report is taken has yet to be set in stone, a process which is still ongoing, he said. However, Luter challenged that, saying there has already been a clear cost in human capital. “As a result of the task force report, human capital decisions have been made,” Luter said. “So therefore, the report is in some ways binding, and we ask you to reconsider de-implementation of that report as it’s manifested itself in human capital decisions being made and ultimately a change in direction in the mission (of the center).” An additional recommendation the task force made was the reduction of full-time staff positions at the Baker Center to just three, as well as Pierce’s position as director, which would mean the elimination of four other staff positions at the center. Whitfield focused specifically on the impact of losing Leah Adinolfi, director of student engagement at the Baker Center. See BAKER on Page 3


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