Tag: Rhodes College

Categories
News The Fly-By

Getting Around

CREDIT: Berlinfoto | dreamstime.com

Rhodes College junior Anthony Siracusa says that traveling by bicycle sometimes takes longer than expected. But not for the reason you might think.

“It’s a social activity,” he says. “You run into people on the street, and they want to talk.”

Even so, Siracusa hopes to get more bicycles on the roads.

Siracusa represented the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee (BPAC) at the Memphis City Council’s park committee meeting last week. Under a joint resolution, the council and the Shelby County Commission want to expand BPAC’s authority and designate it as a permanent standing committee of the area’s long-range transportation planning arm, the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO). The MPO is expected to vote on the change during an August 30th meeting.

“This raises the political profile of BPAC,” Siracusa says of the proposal. “This was a committee organized for a specific purpose.”

BPAC was formed in 2003 to advise on a 25-year comprehensive transportation plan. Now, Siracusa hopes the group will be able to work more closely with the city engineer’s office to add bicycle facilities to area roads.

“One thing BPAC was adamant about from the very beginning was writing into MPO policy that every time a street is repaved, a bike lane is added,” he says.

In 2000, the U.S. Department of Transportation said that states receiving federal dollars needed to incorporate bicycle and pedestrian amenities into transportation pro-jects unless “exceptional circumstances exist.” However, only half of all states have complied, according to the national Complete Streets Coalition.

“Here’s the problem,” says local bike and pedestrian advocate Steven Sondheim. “The federal regulations say when you improve a street or make a new street, they recommend putting in bike and pedestrian facilities, unless there is some compelling reason not to. It’s a recommendation. It’s not a law.”

Though Memphis has designated bicycle routes throughout the city, riding on those roads can still be dangerous. (Insert your own joke about Memphis drivers here.)

“In the three years [since the plan was created], nothing has happened,” Sondheim says. “There is not one bike lane in the city of Memphis. There are some in Germantown and Bartlett.”

Though the MPO plan includes recommendations for bicycle lanes, the group has no authority to implement its plans. Humphreys Boulevard is the only current road project that includes bike lanes.

Perhaps Memphis is behind the curve. Across the country, cities are adding bicycle lanes as part of “complete streets” programs. The idea, utilized in Chicago, Charlotte, and Iowa City, is that public streets should accommodate a variety of transportation, including areas for motor vehicles, bicycles, mass transit, and pedestrians.

Some planners have argued that adding extra vehicle lanes has not reduced traffic congestion; it has just invited more drivers onto the road. Supporters of complete streets initiatives say biking and walking reduce congestion and help fight obesity-related diseases.

The American Association of Retired People and various disability groups are also fans of the program. The environmental argument is a no-brainer, especially with higher gas prices and global warming.

“I see a direct link between creating bicycle facilities and reclaiming streets for a healthier way of life,” Siracusa says. “Bicycle facilities typically reflect people-friendly cities. It’s a mark of livable communities where people like being outside. … Not to mention, bikes are fun.”

The history major would like to see a pilot program add bike lanes to a target neighborhood, preferably in Cooper-Young.

“People are already riding bikes there,” he says. “The least we can do is make them safer.”

But if Memphians want bicycle lanes, they are going to have to lobby for them.

“I wish we lived in a place like Chicago where the mayor got on a bicycle and led the way,” Siracusa says. “At the same time, Memphians have to decide: Do we want to see increased bicycle and pedestrian access in our city?”

Sondheim says a group of cyclists will be starting to identify specific roads for bike lanes as early as this fall.

“What we want is [more lanes] in the next year or two,” he says. “We can’t wait until 2030. That’s part of the problem with long-range plans.”

Sometimes, they just leave you spinning your wheels.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Rhodents in the Wild

CREDIT: Patrick Deveau

The more than 1,300 pictures in Jacy Gentry’s scrapbook reveal sunbathing cheetahs, wind-sculpted sand dunes, and sunsets that bleed orange and pink. But it is only a small peek into a world that blurs the line between nature and civilization.

A Rhodes College junior from Collierville, Gentry was among nine biology students who participated in an environmental field study in Namibia from May 16th to June 6th. The excursion was a “Maymester,” Rhodes’ intensive summer program in which students earn credit hours by hands-on learning in a foreign country.

In this case, the biology students were studying wildlife preservation. Because the population of Namibia is only about 1.8 million people and the country is equivalent in size to France, wildlife is abundant.

Biology professor Rosanna Cappellato, who has led the Maymester to Namibia for the last three years, taught the spring 2007 class that was a prerequisite to the trip.

“There is incredible space,” said Cappellato, “and something about the country makes you feel good.”

A guide accompanied the group to such wildlife sites as Etosha National Park, the Elephant Human Relations Association, and the Cape Cross Seal Reserve, home to 150,000 seals.

Patrick Deveau

Jacy Gentry dances with a Himba woman while children look on.

The group also visited AfriCat, a non-profit organization that protects carnivorous animals, especially cheetahs and leopards. In Namibia, cheetahs number 2,000 — more than any other African country — and the students could track the animals on foot. Several of the cheetahs wore special collars that allowed the students to remotely monitor their movements.

But an especially memorable part of the trip for Gentry was meeting the Himbas. The Himba men were away from the village, but the women took the students inside their huts and then performed a dance outside as their children looked on.

“The kids were adorable,” said Gentry. “They would hang on to me, grab my legs, hold my hands, and not let go.”

Though the students were an ocean away from the United States, Gentry felt at home in the environment. Likewise, some of that environment felt at home with the students.

“One time, two troops of baboons broke into our bungalow and raided our kitchen,” Gentry said, laughing. “Afterward, we found a big pile of trash behind the bungalows.”

Upon their return to the States, the students began writing research papers based on their trip, and Cappellato hopes some will be published. For Gentry, the trip further fueled her desire to study biology and wildlife preservation. “It taught me how important it is to preserve what you have while you still have it,” she said, “because once you go so far one way, you can’t go back.”

Categories
News The Fly-By

Second Opinion

In Rhodes College’s underground Frazier Jelke science building, couches surround a life-sized triceratops replica. Biology samples preserved in jars line the shelves, and physics equations are painted on the wall. The lounge is a nice study area, but with a new partnership, pre-med students may have time to spend in other places.

Rhodes and George Washington University in Washington, D.C., recently formed a partnership that will allow Rhodes students an incredible opportunity: to be accepted into GW’s School of Medicine and Health Sciences as sophomores. Through the early selection program, students will be able to forgo the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) and apply to medical school before completing the four pre-med course requirements, thereby finishing the sequence in four years rather than condensing it into a grueling three.

According to Alan Jaslow, Rhodes’ Director of Health Professions Advising, the new partnership presents a multitude of positives for Rhodes students.

“It’s a great situation for students who want a liberal-arts experience to avoid some of the hurdles pre-med students have throughout the year,” such as the MCAT, he states. “It allows more options and more freedom for the students.”

Megan Tisdale, director of admissions at the GW School of Medicine, says that the institution has similar programs with 11 schools. GW invited Rhodes to join after Rhodes president William Troutt met with GW president Joel Tractenberg. The GW president “was especially interested in the commitment to service at Rhodes College,” Tisdale says, and felt the two schools were an excellent match.

He wasn’t the only one. As Jaslow says, “About 80 percent of our students participate in some form of community service, and GW has a long history in the Washington area of community service.”

Interested students must meet minimum academic requirements and a committee at Rhodes evaluates student applications.

“If we agree that a student is a good candidate and matches well with GW, we’ll pass the student on,” Jaslow explains. “GW’s admissions committee will then evaluate the students. Students should know by the end of their sophomore year if they’ve been accepted.”

Tisdale adds, “Early selection is for applicants with academic distinction and a proven commitment to medicine. These selected students do not have to study for and take the MCAT exam and can use that time and energy to concentrate on their leadership and service activities, as well as academics.” As a result, the students are better prepared for all aspects of studying and practicing medicine.

Categories
Art Art Feature

Outside the Box

The artworks in Memphis College of Art’s group exhibition “Reasons To Riot” tease, rankle, inspire, and horrify. In Hank Willis Thomas’ Jordan and Johnnie Walker in Timberland circa 1923 (inkjet print on canvas), a black man, with a basketball in his right hand and a noose around his neck, swings from the limb of a tree in a slam-dunk position. A dapper, well-dressed gentleman (the Striding Man logo for Johnnie Walker Scotch Whisky) walks past the lynched man with blithe confidence. “Just do it,” the signature advertising slogan for Nike sportswear, is printed at the bottom of the canvas. “Keep Walking” is printed beneath the Striding Man.

Slick advertising combined with sadistic slapstick is hard to take, but Thomas has created one of the most telling works in the exhibition. It slaps us in the face with a crass brutality that incites riot/revolt/rebellion. It brings us face-to-face with a callous mindset (“Just do it and keep walking”) that makes ethnic cleansing, holocaust, and apartheid possible.

Many of the artists challenge us to think outside the box. Derrick Adams’ installation, Playthings, invites us to get down on the floor and into a town painted on a rug. Possibilities for playacting are wide-open in this small community whose citizens are Kenyan tourist figurines as slender as Masai warriors, as sleek as gazelles. These 12-inch-tall wooden figures are dressed as McDonald’s fry cooks, divas in designer evening wear, basketball players, National Guardsmen in camouflage fatigues, and cross-dressers in pink feather coats. At the Internet café painted at the edge of the rug, you can join in the free-wheeling debates about beauty, politics, and fashion.

Chris Scarborough’s untitled portrait of ‘Sara’

With hips moving gracefully from side to side and books balanced on top of her head, digital video artist Leslie Hewitt records herself walking slowly across a landscape of deteriorating concrete, rubble, and weeds. Played again and again, this sparest of narratives gives us time to reflect and to wonder whether the burden the woman carries is a metaphor for the limiting effects of illiteracy or if the books (and the knowledge they contain) serve as her stepping stones out of the ghetto.

In the searing, sardonic, overtly sexual mixed-media drawing Destiny, Zoe Charlton whites-out the face and upper body of a man leaning back on his haunches. She straps what looks like the prow of a 17th-century clipper ship (crammed with human cargo for the slave trade) around the man’s waist like a dildo. A small undecorated Christmas tree dangles from its tip. Charlton takes the unexpressed (cut-off, repressed, denied, watered-down, expurgated) passions of humanity and channels them into a phallus as pointed as this artist’s insights, as unadorned as truth, as double-edged as our species’ capacity for cruelty and joy.

“Reasons To Riot” at Memphis College of Art through April 6th

Chris Scarborough’s exhibition “Living on Cloud Nine” at Clough-Hanson explores gender stereotypes. Scarborough’s most expressive works are digitally altered photographs of a girl named Sara. With subtle computer manipulations, Scarborough reduces her mouth, enlarges her eyes, elongates her limbs, and transforms her into a petite princess of Japanese anime whose kingdom is the cosmos or that vaguely remembered part of ourselves that at age 5 or so was astonished by just about everything.

One of Scarborough’s Saras sits in the sand looking out to sea, another is completely surrounded by darkness, and a third stands in black water looking up into an equally black sky. All three Saras are wide-eyed and open-mouthed with wonder.

Scarborough also digitally alters photographs of a blue-eyed, platinum-blond teenager named Shannon whose matte complexion and broad, photo-op smiles replace Sara’s freckles and look of amazement.

Hair-tousled and dressed in form-fitting sweater and slacks, one of the Shannons lies on a thick white rug looking up at the viewer with sex-kitten coquetry. Another image of the same young woman hangs on the wall to our right as we leave the gallery. This Shannon is slimmer; the texture and tone of her complexion has gone from matte to plastic. With the same seamless manipulations that transform Sara into an archetype of unadulterated awe, Scarborough turns Shannon into a Barbie doll lying in a trash-strewn lot, her limbs bent in exaggerated positions. Scarborough’s Shannon/Barbie composite could be a victim of drugs, foul play, or suicide, or she may stand as a metaphor for the soul-numbing effects of focusing on surface beauty.

And then there are the faces of Sara. Once you’ve recovered from the longing and regret these images engender — look again. In small increments (like Scarborough’s digital manipulations) relax and let Sara take you back to a time when you could see worlds of possibility inside and out.

“Living on Cloud Nine” at Clough-Hanson Gallery through April 4th

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

Analyze This

Psychology always trumps ideology. Well, at least according to James Carville. The squinty, chrome-domed architect of Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign is always good for a memorable quote, but some of the Ragin’ Cajun’s more recent antics have left political observers wondering whether or not the cantankerous analyst, author, and political talk-show regular is still relevant. No sooner had the Democrats retaken the House and the Senate by running hard against President Bush and the conservative agenda than Carville was publicly fretting that the party’s left flank would be its undoing. He brought down the wrath of the left’s vociferous online community by forcefully suggesting that Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean, whose “50 State Strategy” played a certain, if not entirely quantifiable, role in the Dem’s first decisive victory since 9/11, should be immediately replaced by Harold Ford Jr., the triangulating conservative Democrat from Tennessee who ran a textbook 1992 campaign and lost his Senate campaign to moderate Republican Bob Corker. The conservative, anti-Dean rhetoric caused some on the winning side to wonder if Carville had become so deeply entrenched in Beltway groupthink that he was no longer the man who once famously claimed that “Republicans will always take on people in the interest of power,” while “good Democrats will never fear to take on the power in the interests of people.”

On Thursday, March 29th, at 7 p.m., the Rhodes College Lecture Board brings the always colorful and ever controversial Carville to the McCallum Ballroom in the Bryan Campus Life Center on the Rhodes College campus.

James Carville at rhodes college, Thursday, March 29th. Tickets are $20 at the door, $10 for students. Rhodes students get in free.