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(04/26/19 3:39pm)
As I stare down my own graduation, I cannot help but feel I owe IUPUI everything. My mother’s decision to get a nursing degree from IUPUI in the 1990s was hers alone. But this university’s accessibility helped her to enter the medical field and become the primary breadwinner of my family. My status as a legacy graduate has given me serious privilege that I need to unpack and tackle--and I am not alone in this.
My mom’s hard work in a well-paying field let me grow up with financial security; she has helped me graduate from IUPUI with two degrees. She has helped all the patients she’s treated as an RN and nurse practitioner. I’m proud of her.
My older brother also graduated from IUPUI; my family is a blooming legacy success story by the university’s standards. If I lived on campus as a freshman, I might have been the ideal student in the eyes of admissions.
IUPUI’s presence in Indianapolis gave my family and myself privilege. But this presence came at a cost: basically the entire near west side and almost all the people who once lived here. I’m quick to rail the university about its lack of accountability on this matter. This displacement was one of many ways racism manifests on a structural level.
What happened to the near west side is not my fault; it’s not any other student or staff or faculty member’s fault. But systemic inequality lives through me whether I like it or not. As with thousands before me, my tuition supported this university and benefitted me at a community’s expense. I have to grapple with that.
I wish I learned IUPUI’s history when I started as a freshman. I would still have attended. The higher tuition elsewhere in Indianapolis, stigma against community colleges, and necessity to get a bachelor’s are really good motivators. But knowing how one participates in systemic inequality is the first step to reducing harm. Reflecting on my personal benefits at this cost matters.
IUPUI is far from special in its unsavory history, but doing the bare minimum of talking about this injustice on an institutional level would be great. That has a trickle-down effect. I knew about the basics of privilege before I learned this story, but it wasn’t until afterwards I understood how simple it is to look past it.
I don’t mean to simplify the intricacies of inequalities. Being white means my family was never segregated to a particular part of town and then displaced. Access to higher education is a privilege in and of itself. I’m happy to have made it through and walk in just two short weeks.
I have no clue as to what I’ll do for the rest of my life, but I do know this: it’s my responsibility to fight systemic inequality. That means going beyond reflecting on my privilege. It entail community-engaged, equity-oriented praxis. I’m prepared for the long road because of my education.
(04/26/19 3:34pm)
The Supreme Court of the United States is the scariest government body in America. Right now, the justices are examining cases that will determine civil rights for vulnerable communities. Namely, the citizenship question on the 2020 census and the two cases which challenge that LGBTQ+ people fall under seventh amendment protections. But as I worry and fume, I refuse to give into fear.
As a queer person with foreign-born friends, documented and not, I am angry and deeply concerned. If the court rules in favor of the Trump administration, which it very well may, the federal government could ask if a census respondent is a citizen. In this openly xenophobic political regime which eagerly denigrates and mistreats people in need, it’s easy to imagine all non-citizens declining to answer.
As a result, the census will likely be deeply skewed. Predominantly immigrant communities could be miscounted and subsequently misrepresented in federal funding allocations. And who knows how information on non-citizens would be abused by the Trump administration.
Job discrimination absolutely applies to LGBTQ+ people. Based on the precedence for marriage equality, Supreme Court justices recognize the need for equal treatment of queer minorities. But after the ban on transgender people serving in the American military went through, who knows what could happen.
Transgender people are especially vulnerable in all aspects of life, so a whisper of a potentially bad ruling is understandably scaring them. And under this administration, this case is just one in a litany of heart-stopping uncertainties. There’s 2020 election and anti-abortion crackdowns and the whole we-have-ten-years-to-slow-climate-change-or-we’re-doomed thing.
It’s the nightmare news hour every morning. Whose human dignity is next?
I call and sometimes write letters to my local and state representatives. Since the 2018 midterms turned Indiana blood-red, I feel like I’m shouting at a brick wall. Despondence creeps up on me. I’m quite powerless in the context of these court rulings. No words I could put to paper would be of consequence.
Then I remember how Americans got into this mess: Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell lead the charge to prevent Merrick Garland’s confirmation in 2016. Flagrant undermining of the American democratic system to ensure conservative reign for a generation.
I become incensed. Senator McConnell is just a case study in old white men in power thinking black and brown and female and queer lives are unequal to their own. I surge past hopelessness and land square in righteous indignation at the threat against human rights.
Even if it does nothing, calling, writing, knocking on doors, and keeps me hopeful. Rather than lie down and let even more vulnerable people take it, I would rather channel my anger and risk compassion fatigue. Acting on hope is the simplest and most vital thing to surviving an onslaught.
(04/19/19 4:08pm)
IUPUI students are nothing if not busy, and the students of the Model United Nations club are no exception. Members are dedicated to their club, their peers, and understanding international politics. As they face Ivy League schools in debate, they hope for more recognition back home too.
Model UN, often abbreviated to MUN, is an international collegiate-level student club. It’s also exactly what it sounds like. Students research real-world issues and then represent various countries in a litany of meetings and caucuses that actually exist in the United Nations in competitions.
Daniel Di Martino, a junior from Venezuela, helped restart MUN at IUPUI in 2017 and is its former president. The club maintains about 50 members, 20 of whom are active in training for competitions; the club is ranked in the top 75 of all participating American colleges.
“It’s not just that I think it’s fun to talk about diplomacy and that kind of thing,” Zach McDougal, a senior and the outgoing vice president, said. “I think people underestimate how important it is to understand other cultures in general, and then also, from a political perspective, what role other countries have to play.”
Partly because they lack faculty advisors, members train each other for competitions. Students who are competing next (members rotate to give everyone a shot) meet twice a week. No subject is considered taboo--students are encouraged to dissect all perspectives of an argument, especially the sides they may disagree with.
“When you’re in that training role, it's really fulfilling to share what you know, figure out what you don’t know, and share that with others,” Riley Smith, sophomore and newly-elected MUN president, said.
MUN club members are a diverse crowd. About half of the active members are international students, and their majors vary from political science to engineering. Their love of history, politics, global issues and of course debate bring them closer together
“That’s how I made most of my friend group at IUPUI, was through Model United Nations,” Di Martino said. “It’s an activity that’s not just about the leadership it gives you and how good it looks on your resume, but about the social connections.”
Those connections are forged not just in training, but also formal competitions across the country.
There’s two kinds of MUN competitions: general assembly and crisis committee. General assembly mimics the UN system. Upwards of 200 delegates write, argue and pass policy in caucuses before a panel of judges. Students who do all three are in the running for best delegate of the competition.
Crisis councils are much more like roleplaying. Students assume the identities of real people in history and debate based on what their character would want. These are small, sometimes only a dozen students in each competition, and fast-paced. It’s more of an acquired taste to intensely research and mimic J.P. Morgan’s wife Jane in the early 20th century, for instance.
“We often joke that Model UN is like LARPing with suits on,” Smith said.
The final conference of the spring 2019 semester is an all-crisis council in Chicago over Easter weekend. Seven members, plus Smith as a coach, will attend.
The club selects which conferences they will attend months in advance. Various members attend several over the course of a semester.
These competitions aren’t cheap. It can cost several thousand dollars to send 10 students to News York City or Toronto for a weekend, even when they rent vans and take buses. At IUPUI, members pay no dues. The club is funded by the School of Liberal Arts, but $16,000 only goes so far. To compare, both of IUPUI’s golf teams get six figures.
To keep MUN as accessible as possible, the IUPUI MUN club organizes Indianapolis MUN, a high school-level competition,which Di Martino stepped down from club presidency to direct. Club members also fundraise like their recent spring fling date auction.
IUPUI’s MUN club is taking steps to become recognized as a team alongside the IUPUI debate team and mock trial to access better funds and more autonomy. Members who dedicate their time to an academic pursuit on a national stage want to expand without fear of denying students access to competition.
“Name a prestigious university around the country and we have competed against them and won against them in many instances,” Sam West, a senior and the former conference director, said. “People on the MUN circuit know who IUPUI is now, and that’s never happened before.”
(04/05/19 4:09pm)
IU Day comes but once a year, thank goodness. Attending IUPUI means attending a school with a unique campus culture and history that’s still a satellite of Bloomington. Call me jaded or boring, but I’m not a fan of celebrating IU Day when not only is the campus more than just IU, it has a rich urban history that is always left out.
Okay, I am jaded and boring. Never in my life have I been enthusiastic about school pride or iconography, especially as a college student. I am sapped of patience after four years. More and more administrative processes go through Bloomington.
Not to mention the years of whispered rumors that IUPUI will be split and leave Purdue behind. It seems unlikely and I’ve never gotten a concrete, on-the-record answer about it to date.
I’m not alone in being less than enthused about IU Day. Student culture at IUPUI is less about making time to have fun on campus and more about getting off campus as quickly as possible to get to work or finally sleep at home. Even as more traditional freshmen come, many other students are transfers and older students returning for a second shot.
Perhaps I’m holding IUPUI in an unfair position: it is a satellite campus. It is what it is. I understand completely why universities need to celebrate and commemorate and maintain shiny, consistent brands. It looks good for prospective students and alumni.
And it’s not like we don’t have our own mascot. At least jaguars are cuter than Hoosiers.
But the issue remains: IUPUI is more than just an extension of Bloomington. Cavanaugh Hall does not sit in Monroe County. Our student life is completely distinct, as is the history of the campus.
Since IUPUI’s 50 year anniversary came this semester, it’s easy to see how those in power talk about the displacement: by not calling it displacement. By framing it as
a blessing to an urban neighborhood--thanks to IUPUI, the area didn’t just fall into utter disrepair, as it would have inevitably. It was a replacement, nothing more nor less.
I know that’s not the truth. And I rag on this fact whenever it’s time to celebrate how wonderful this campus is. I would make demands of the university to correct these wrongs, but first the university needs to openly and readily acknowledge what it’s done.
It’s just tough to be thrilled by the magic of IU Day when I’m so disappointed this institution doesn’t think about the damage it has perpetuated in meaningful ways. It’s my last IU Day, but I’m still not keen to be here for it.
(03/29/19 4:10pm)
“The Price of Progress: The IUPUI/Indiana Avenue Story” play existed for the explicit purpose of starting a dialogue about the relationship IUPUI has with the history of the neighborhood it displaced. Part of the 50 year anniversary, this play prompted interesting questions as to how the university interacts with this legacy and those directly affected by it, but I thought it could’ve challenge institutional power, too.
The play lasted for more than two hours and featured dramatizations and videos of IUPUI and Indiana Avenue’s past, plus live jazz and dancing. The band, The Jazzmen featuring vocalist Sandi Lomax, was fantastic.
I found the acting quite charming and enjoyed the sense of humor the characters embodied. They were archetypical, but the play was more about events and facts than any one person, so it worked. The dancers were young and lively, and their talent shone brighter as the styles became more contemporary.
The characters reflected on the past while at a 50th anniversary gala. The portion which focused on Indiana Avenue cel
ebrated how African-Americans in Indianapolis created a hotspot for music and culture. The second act focused on IUPUI’s many milestones and achievements.
The scene which marked the transition from Indiana Avenue to IUPUI’s was the night of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. The performance was a moving call that change will come, even as things appear to fall apart.
This play was partly inspired by the work of Dr. Paul Mullins and the late Glenn White. My second major is anthropology, and I’ve taken multiple classes with Mullins. I’ve heard the story of IUPUI’s displacement of west side locals at least four times.
I mention this because, based on that work, my understanding is that near west side neighborhoods did not wane solely because of desegregation and wealthier families leaving for other parts of town, as asserted in the play. IUPUI did not replace an inevitably failing slice of real estate.
Federally-funded urban displacement swept the nation after WWII. The university bought the land beneath houses where campus stands today. One by one, IUPUI plowed and paved until there simply weren’t enough people to sustain a neighborhood. It was perfectly legal and painfully slow.
As stated early in the play, this damage has been done. Can’t go back. And IUPUI has made serious achievements, as I learned through song and celebration. But I worry that at its core, the price for this progress is yet to be reckoned with. IUPUI continues to expand north into Ransom Place for student house.
As a conclusion to the play, a character read aloud an additional message from Mullins. I immediately recognized it as his words, not just because nobody else ever writes like that, but because his open call for the university to readily acknowledge the population displacement rang so clear.
This play was created to inform, entertain, and inspire its audience. In that, it succeeded. This is my response to the call for dialogue. My answer is that once the damage is done, what matters is taking responsibility, no matter the shape it takes. And in 50 years, that’s yet to come.
(03/08/19 4:04pm)
The near west side of Indianapolis has a rich, predominately African-American history that precedes IUPUI by a century. To celebrate the campus’ half-century milestone and these community roots, the Multicultural Center has produced the play “The Price of Progress: The Indiana Avenue/IUPUI Story.”
Tickets are currently sold out for all three showings on March 19, 20, and 22 from 6 to 9 p.m. in the Campus Center theatre. This all-ages play was sponsored in part by the Office of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion under Dr. Karen Dace’s direction.
Dr. Khalilah Shabazz, director of the Multicultural Center, devised the idea for a play to portray this history last year. That summer, she reached out to Vernon A. Williams, a strategist for the Office of Community Engagement, to write the play. He previously wrote the play “The Divine Nine” about black fraternities and sororities.
“I don’t mind telling you it was the most challenging writing that I’ve ever done,” he said. “Because I knew how much was tied to this. Spiritually and intellectually. And I knew it was nothing to be trifled with, so I did not want to dash into it without doing the kind of background checking that would give me a real up close feel for it.”
This play was partly inspired by “The Price of Progress: IUPUI, the Color Line, & Urban Displacement” by Dr. Paul Mullins and Glenn White, but it is not a dramatization of the book. Shabazz also drew on the work of the late Amber Pratcher, who documented Indiana Avenue in a web project.
“It would be impossible to capture all those emotions in what amounts to about 45 minutes to an hour for the first act. It would be impossible,” he said of the book. “The most that I do is whet people’s appetite to know more about the Indiana Avenue district.”
Cast and production members include community members, IUPUI students, alumni and employees. The play is not a comprehensive history of the area by any means. The hope is audience members will continue to study this story on their own.
The first act will narrate the history of Indiana Avenue and feature its African-American population. Characters at a 50th anniversary gala will look back on the cultural history of Indiana Avenue, up until the night Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr was assassinated in 1969.
“Progress means somebody had to lose something and it’s important to understand that,” Dr. Dace said. “My sense is that members of the community appreciate the acknowledgement.”
The second act begins that same year and chronicles the big moments in IUPUI’s first 50 years and the continuing relationship between the near west side and IUPUI.
“I’m pleased to see people are interested in this history,” Mullins said.
(03/08/19 4:04pm)
I don’t like to advertise that I’m atheist. Not because I feel threatened by religion, but because the loudest atheists, like Richard Dawkins, give the rest of us a bad reputation. Rather than battle conservative Biblical literalism, New Atheists typically stigmatize religion wholecloth.
But not all secular people are like this. As Dr. Philip Kitcher described in his lecture “Religious Progress and Humanist Hope,” there is a need to decouple morality from religion, and a way to not be a New Atheist about it.
IUPUI’s department of philosophy facilitated this lecture as part of a series of groups and lectures on secular humanism for the past three years.
Secular humanism is an umbrella term for secular beliefs that have grown in response to dominant Christian perspectives. The most prolific secularists are the New Atheist type: doggedly, obnoxiously concerned in proving belief wrong.
“What other secular humanists are doing, and Kitcher is one of them, is they try to reconcile more progressive strains within Christianity and other mostly monotheistic religions and combine them with a more secular viewpoint,” Dr. Cornelis De Waal, professor of philosophy at IUPUI, explained. I had never heard this term before.
I found Kitcher’s lecture to be comprehensive and a lot to take in. In essence, it’s fine to believe in and worship a creator, but uncritically following tenets written millenia ago is dangerous.
Kitcher compared a literalist fanatic to a commandant in a fascist regime. He said that ancient “tribal” gods, like the God of the Old Testament, were “vindictive narcissists” who sanctioned slaughter and slavery. Moral standards cannot be pulled from these texts.
Kitcher’s model for how religions “progress from, not progress to,” was interesting. As believers accept religious diversity, they shift away from ancient texts and start “using a filter to screen out the bits that violate their moral sensibility.” Flexibility, nuance, and tolerance eventually arrive.
Kitcher decried New Atheism as privileged and unconcerned with structural inequality that stems from religious-based morality, like homophobia and misogyny. They also
don’t give credit to progressive, pro-human religious endeavors.
“To say there is no god is one thing. To reject all religion and everything that comes out of the tradition as being hopelessly implicated as a result of that is quite different,” De Waal said.
Following the lecture, Andrea Jain, an assistant professor in the department of religious studies, voiced criticism that Kitcher’s perspective was narrow and limited to a view of religious progression that was white, patriarchal, and Protestant.
“I felt like the paper was lacking somewhat in the knowledge about the variety of religious lives,” she said. Many contemporary tribal religions do not rely on texts, she said, and progressive religion often comes from radical social movements.
I agreed with her. Kitcher’s use of the word tribal was loaded, and he agreed, too. His model of religious progression was a narrow analysis of Abrahamic religion, but I walked away feeling it could be applied to other contexts.
At its core, I found reassurance in Kitcher’s call for secular humanists to better align ourselves with progressive religious people. I walked away feeling empowered knowing there is a nuanced way to be a non-believer.
“Religious traditions and their secular counterparts are incomplete,” Kitcher said. “What matters is improving people's lives.”
(02/22/19 5:32pm)
After 30 years, IUPUI’s Office of International Affairs has not slowed down. To help new students, the OIA runs the International Peer Mentoring Program (IPMP). Mentors guide students in their first years through both typical student concerns and the social complexities of being a young person abroad.
As of fall 2018, IUPUI has 1,891 international students. Most come from India, Saudi Arabia, China, and Mexico. It’s easier for the university to recruit consistently from pockets of established relationships. International students are often attracted to IUPUI because of its urban campus, Purdue programming, and high scholarship offerings.
Following application and acceptance, the enrollment process for international students can be highly involved, so Estela Kite steps in. Kite is the international program manager, which means she balances multiple roles: not only does she manage the pre-arrival services for all international students, she directs the IPMP.
“It’s me helping coach or mentor them through any difficulty, and helping connect them with the appropriate resources to help,” Kite said. Under her guidance, trios of mentors advise freshmen on how to handle the reality of culture shock and acclimate to American education structure.
Compared to other places, American universities display a level of informality. Calling a professor by their first name is rare elsewhere in the world. Many international students are surprised by the level of familiarity their American peers express in class, only to withdraw it later.
“The way people make friendships looks different,” Kite said. “This is just a little bit of the stuff we teach with our mentors.”
Hafsa Naeem is a sophomore math major from Pakistan and an IPMP mentor. Living in the United States as a child helped her acclimate, but she was still shy in class. Consistent meetings with her freshman year mentors helped her settle in.
“I feel like that’s the most important factor, having a mentor. It’s a person you fit in with, a circle you belong in, and that familiarity definitely helps. It’s like, ‘oh I can talk to that person!’”
Cultural differences and English proficiency can compound social anxiety tenfold. As a result, it’s common for international students to form friendships along national lines. It takes time for both American and international students to power through the fear of misspeaking and make real connections. But the only way out is through.
“What if I mean something, and I frame my sentence the wrong way and offend them, which I don’t wanna do,” Ketaki Bapat, a junior psychology major from Dubai, said of her initial fears. “I was just like, ‘I’m gonna go for it,’ so I did.”
Homesickness is a persistent, universal problem that also feeds into loneliness.
Aline Perez, a sophomore computer engineering major, came to Indiana from Mexico as a high school student. She was never a mentee, but got involved in IPMP after a volunteering experience.
“I have my mom and my dad here and I still feel homesick,” Perez said. “I really sympathize with them because they’re here on their own. It’s something that stays. You just learn to deal with it and make more friends.”
Mentors strongly encourage their mentees to get involved in anything and look for opportunities. Staying occupied and engaged is key to dealing with culture shock and fear.
“Get more involved. I know it’s hard when you’re in another country, another culture, but if you find the right people who are really friendly, you can actually get involved,” Perez said.
(02/01/19 5:09pm)
Whenever I tell someone I’m a journalism major, the reply is often: “Fantastic! We need more good journalists in the world.” I appreciate that response. It’s a small, polite thing to say, but it recognizes the element that matters in media--the writers. And in light of sweeping layoffs, it feels like news corporations missed the memo.
The news hit like a one-two punch. Gannett, Verizon Media and Buzzfeed cut staff in the same 24 hour span. About 1,000 people lost their jobs. These corporations downsized for a variety of reasons, but it’s all still distressing.
Gannett continues to shrink and laid off cartoonists and columnists like IndyStar’s Tim Swarens. The Huffington Post, owned by Verizon Media, laid off seven percent across the board. Buzzfeed culled its cute side, because it’s cheaper to crowdsource quizzes, as well as writers from Buzzfeed News.
https://twitter.com/tswarens/status/1088098963109093376?s=12
I can only imagine how stressful this was and continues to be for every staff member involved. My condolences go out to each one of them.
It’s been horrifying just to read it all unfold. Disheartening but unsurprising. One could blame a lack of paid subscribers, but that’s disingenuous. Buzzfeed is worth millions of dollars but uppermost management still chose to fire 15 percent of their workforce department by department. Former employees and their surviving colleagues had to demand paid time off severance.
I wonder how digital media is supposed to operate at this rate. The layoffs have sparked discourse about Facebook and Google’s complicity in strangling news media, but this has been a slow killing. Staying afloat matters but at what cost?
I’m alarmed when I consider how many veteran reporters are struggling to find full employment and that I’m potential competition. This has bothered me for some time and I know I’m not alone. My peers and I live in an era when disinformation is a weapon, but profit remains the greatest priority.
Journalism is a stressful, borderline thankless job whether it’s the city desk or investigative. A little job security would be nice. But CEOs and shareholders rarely understand that.
(01/25/19 4:06pm)
IUPUI officially turned 50 on Thursday and celebrated with balloons, cupcakes and speeches. The Campus Center was packed with students and visitors experiencing the campus at its finest. Although IUPUI has much to commemorate, there are those on campus who feel the university needs to own up to its impact on the near west side of Indianapolis to better serve the city.
Dr. Paul Mullins, an IUPUI anthropology professor, presented a short lecture about the archaeological and ethnographic work he and his colleague Dr. Sue Hyatt have conducted for 20 years. "The Price of Progress: Race and Displacement in Indianapolis' Near-Westside” detailed the neighborhood that once existed where IUPUI stands today.
Ransom Place, briefly addressed in the administration’s Report to the Community, is a survivor of this historic community. Change to the near west side began before WWI, but IUPUI’s subsequent expansion left the greatest impact.
The 1950s and ‘60s gave way to urban renewal across the nation. Large cities systematically cleared impoverished, often African-American neighborhoods to make way for infrastructure projects. IUPUI and Indianapolis cooperated in a slightly different fashion. The university bought land acre by acre; later, house by house. After 20 years, the neighborhood was razed.
“It’s not a good or bad, it’s just a different process,” Mullins explained in a prior interview. “We didn’t do mass displacements the way much of Chicago did, for instance.”
But this history is poorly remembered. Mullins described faculty learning inaccurate information over decades. Abbey Chambers, a doctoral student and former advisor for the Herron School of Art and Design, only learned bits of this story while researching John Herron’s legacy.
“Traditional-aged students, probably, don’t think about it unless they’re coming from one of these affected communities,” Chambers said. “How much do we encourage people to think about the history of a place?”
This history is not kept secret. Mullins explained he was never hindered while conducting this research. Plaques describing what once stood on IUPUI property dot the campus but offer few details. But small memorials feel hollow when a university has yet to have institutional conversations about complicity in displacement.
Anna Zaroni, an undergrad video production major, personally studies the distinctly African-American history of the near west side. She feels that IUPUI’s concern for campus-neighborhood relations are superficial without owning up to who was hurt in the name of progress.
“They’re not upfront about this in the ways that I think would align better to what their mission statements are about all,” Zaroni said. She credits faculty, student and community pressure for progress made.
Myron Duff, a doctoral student who works for the Office of Community Engagement, appreciates the opportunities IUPUI gives him but laments the silence surrounding the university’s participation in these misdeeds.
“I think the leadership, starting with Bloomington leadership, needs to make a public apology to this city, particularly African-Americans, for how they were displaced,” Duff said. “And bring them to the table for some of the decision making processes for how things should get established.”
Duff then stated that descent communities should have significant discounts to attend IUPUI, and public ownership of guilt is a starter.
Both Mullins and Zaroni shared the idea for students to engage with this history during orientation. Students could engage with community elders and descendants and make productive conversation.
“For many of us, faculty, staff and students, we’re going to do community-based work,” Mullins said. “It makes no sense to rush the hell out into the city not knowing some of these histories that affected the west side and highway displacement throughout downtown.”
(02/20/18 8:23pm)
On Thursday,Feb.15, IUPUI’s anthropology department presented the 29th Taylor Symposium, “Invisible Indianapolis: Race and Heritage in the Circle City.” Before the luncheon Excellence in Diversity Awards and keynote speaker, attendees saw the city and anthropology through a new perspective.
Responsibility for the Taylor Symposium rotates through the School of Liberal Arts’ departments alphabetically. Dr. Susan Hyatt and Dr. Paul Mullins organized and lead the proceedings. Together they created Invisible Indianapolis, a community-based research project studying the histories Indianapolis’ marginalized populations, especially those displaced by IUPUI’s construction.
“You can’t undo displacement once it’s happened, but I think it’s tremendously meaningful for people to know that we remember and honor that history now since he did that work,” Hyatt said.
This research may sound unconventional to the uninitiated. It’s part of historic archaeology, a branch of research that bucks the popular conception of the ancient or exotic and focuses on the physical remains of the last 500 years of human history.
Historic archaeologists dig unglamourous sites and tell the stories of ordinary people who are often underrepresented in cultural memory.
“A lot of people think of archaeology and they think of dinosaur bones, but it’s also the trash that our ancestors threw down the outhouse hole,” Kate Scott, a reference department worker at the Indiana Historical Society, commented.
Mullins told the story of a certain two-story outhouse to introduce the first address. From 1908-1958, it sat where the Barnes & Noble Starbucks sits today. In 2007, Mullins and his students excavated the site as the Campus Center’s construction began. This example of urban archaeology lead into the introduction of Dr. Krysta Ryzewski.
Ryzewski met Mullins and Hyatt last spring at a similar event. She described her work in Detroit for Wayne State University as the “younger, less organized cousin” of Invisible Indianapolis.
She told of excavating Little Harry’s Speakeasy, a local legend, and debunking several myths about it. But for all the fun of digging speakeasy tunnels and searching for bootlegging paper trails, this work deals in sad stories. Another project with the Brewster-Douglass Housing Projects brought the nature of public archaeology and preservation into question.
The Brewster-Douglass homes were predominately African-American and used from the 1930s to the 1950s. In 2014, the empty towers were demolished to make new affordable housing, but the federal loan application failed. Dan Gilbert, founder of Quicken Loans, bought the empty space. Private ownership means archaeological surveying is not mandatory. Ryzewski got access to an important site, but only because it was in the backyard of a house being renovated for an HGTV program.
“I kind of fear in some regard this will be the way of the future,” Ryzewski said in her speech.
But physical evidence is just half of these projects. Representing communities themselves is crucial to bringing ignored stories to the foreground.
Following Ryzewski’s presentation was a panel moderated by Dr. Ronda Henry Anthony, an associate professor of English and Africana studies and another friend of Hyatt and Mullins. She lead a discussion among three African-American residents: Paula Brooks of Ransom Place, Leigh Riley Evans of Mapleton Fall Creek, and Shaune R. Shelby, the senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church.
These speakers, among others, were regular participants with Invisible Indianapolis. They shared their concerns about cultivating stronger community ties to prevent further displacement and protecting what remains. Loss of structure, like schools and churches, and changing infrastructure can destroy a neighborhood.
Brooks said Ransom Place is seeking conservation status, and would like to see more of Martin Luther King Street get the same treatment. She half-joked that her neighborhood was a stepchild to the city, but was serious that “the blackness is devalued.” New development paints over the specific African-American history of the area.
All of the speakers agreed that neighborhoods like these needed to balance preservation and progression. New and old residents alike have to be invested in the area for it to survive. But institutional discrimination is a difficult force to fight, and much is lost. So the work of Invisible Indianapolis comes to save what remains.
“The research work that they do and the people they represent and the community members they bring in and the stories they preserve are so important,” Anthony said. “And I just don’t want that stuff to disappear.”
(11/13/17 4:37pm)
November 10, 2017 Paris Garnier
A 36-count box of Tampax tampons costs about $6.99, plus tax. This is money that some people, particularly college students, do not always have. But on Monday, from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., anyone who came through the Multicultural Center Lounge could help themselves to free menstrual products and clothing.
Leftover products and clothes were given to other local nonprofits.
Sponsored by the Born This Way Foundation and Peace First, philanthropic studies major Taylor M. Parker created the Clothes Swap and Menstrual Product Drive to increase student access to these items.
“So I’ve always had a peculiar passion for access to menstrual hygiene products, or menstrual hygiene health rather,” Parker said. “Or even just menstrual hygiene.”
Parker’s interest began in her junior year of high school, when a friend asked her for help when she couldn’t afford tampons for herself, her mother and three sisters. Parker supplied her until the family was back on their feet.
Soon after, she heard a statistic that one in eight menstruating Hoosiers lacked proper access to menstrual products, which horrified her. Improper menstrual hygiene can lead to serious and potentially fatal illness, like toxic shock syndrome.
So Parker started her own nonprofit, “Project Clean Living,” now the “Red Dot Drives” community projects, to increase menstrual product access in places like schools and homeless shelters.
“It’s a huge problem and no one wants to talk about it because they think it’s gross or it’s too feminine,” she said. “Menstruation is not a feminine issue, and even if it was, what’s wrong with that? It’s not gross, it’s natural, and people need to step up and understand it’s an issue.”
Parker is the vice president for the LGBTQ+ Student Alliance, and knows that not every menstruating individual identifies as a woman, or even as a feminine person. Menstruation can trigger intense gender dysphoria and shame, so she included the clothing swap and opaque tote bags. Students could cover their products with the clothes and carry bags around campus without fear of having their gender expression misinterpreted.
“I think it’s very creative, and it’s respectful, because not everyone wants to just walk out here with a box of tampons,” Payton Hendershot, a junior and double major, said. “And we got really cute bags. I got the one with the dogs.”
If the Born This Way Foundation sounds familiar, it’s Lady Gaga’s anti-bullying nonprofit.
It collaborated with Peace First, a nonprofit to empower young adult social justice projects, to create the Channel Kindness award. Parker applied to over the summer out of curiosity. She never anticipated winning, but then she got the call to get started.
Taylor M. Parker @taylormparker_
We’re out collecting donations at @ladygaga’s concert. Thank you @BTWFoundation for giving us this opportunity! #ChannelKindnessIUPUI
Peace First sent her $250 and the help of Fish Stark, a Fellow-in-Residence, to make her project happen. She built a team of her peers, all queer women. Stark and Parker communicated for weeks, as Peace First is based in Boston.
Parker had never worked with something as large as the Born This Way Foundation and was initially intimidated. Stark was awed by Parker’s organizational skills and drive to create sustainable change. Most young people Stark works with have a great idea, but need guidance.
“The process for this project, honestly, has been a dream, because Taylor is a force of nature,” he said. “She’s someone with such a clearheaded sense of justice.”
From 4 to 8 p.m. on Sunday night, Parker, her team and Stark collected donated menstrual products outside the Lady Gaga concert at Bankers Life Fieldhouse. They gathered upwards of 6,000 products, and then Parker sat in the front row.
“It’s unparalleled. Her performance was--it was just absolutely remarkable,” she said. “I have such a huge place in my heart for celebrities that are using their platform for the social good.”
But Parker’s love of concerts is outpaced by her burning desire to change IUPUI, and the world, for the better.
“Students deserve to be comfortable on campus where they’re here for sometimes 12 hours a day,” Parker said. “But I know that at the very least, this is going to begin a policy change at IUPUI to make these products accessible for students on campus.”
(09/04/17 6:29pm)
While most students know of Taylor Hall not many know about the man who's name now graces the building.
As the center of campus, Taylor Hall is home to a wide range of organizations, from the MAC to the student groups in the Multicultural Center. It was originally used as the campus library, but was renamed for the late Dr. Joseph Taylor, the first African-American dean of IUPUI and the school of liberal arts.
The eponymous 2017 Taylor Symposium was Tuesday, at which attendees examined the impact of diversity on campus and Indianapolis. Throughout his life, Dr. Taylor championed not only the liberal arts, but diversity and student support on campus, and social justice in the broader community.
Often called a gentle giant, Taylor was 6 feet 4 inches and was always described as a very distinguished-looking man, and had a very friendly face.
Taylor was active within the Indianapolis community, notably with the Flanner House, but also served on the board for groups like the Marion County Tuberculosis Association and the Indianapolis Urban League. In 1973, he was appointed by Federal Judge S. Hugh Dillon to desegregate Indianapolis Public Schools.
“Because of his obvious long involvement in the community, people recognized him. They respected him and so he would often be the person to represent us [IUPUI] in dealing with the community,” Gregory Mobley, an archive specialist in the Ruth Lilly Special Collections and Archives, said.
But before he became the dean of IUPUI in 1967, Taylor graduated from University of Illinois at Urbana with a bachelor's degree in 1936 and a master’s degree the next year. He would spend the next few years teaching and attending graduate school at Fisk University.
Taylor was a “foot soldier” for the Myrdal-Carnegie study, “An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy.” From 1939-40, he travelled the country with Charles S. Johnson and studied segregation and race relations.
He explained his observations in a 1990 IU student newspaper article, stating that he believed racism is a learned behavior and a set of values accepted by the white majority, quoted as saying, “Rarely is there anyone among us who is not prejudiced in some way, but prejudice is learned.”
He would then return to Fisk, but later moved to another college to finish school. Although he couldn’t live on campus or even get a haircut in an actual barbershop in town, Taylor got his doctorate in sociology from IU Bloomington in 1952.
He would never diminish the obstacles he faced and readily stated that IU “didn’t have a particularly good record as far as race was concerned,” but none of the major universities like Purdue and Butler “could throw stones at the other one[s] in those days,” according to a series of interviews with Sheila Goodenough, an African-American culture historian, in 1990.
It was 1958 when Taylor came to what was then called the “IU Indianapolis” campus to teach part time. He became an associate professor in ‘62 because the school “had very few full-time teachers of any ilk” and became the associate director of campus that same year.
In 1967, he was appointed to be the dean of IUI--the Purdue merge wasn’t until ‘72. One of his first goals was to expand IUI beyond its current two-year program into a standard four-year college. He never stopped pushing for more African-American faculty and students, as well as other marginalized groups.
“I think Joseph Taylor understood exactly what the urban university was supposed to be,” Mobley said. “Because I know in the 1970-71 annual report that he wrote he talked about it being the purpose of IUPUI to really work with those populations that had not had a background in college education.”
Throughout his time as the dean of campus and of liberal arts, Taylor continued to teach sociology and advise administration until 1983, when he became the professor emeritus of sociology. He maintained an office in Cavanaugh Hall’s fifth floor on a part time basis until his retirement. On Sept. 23, 2000, he passed away, and in 2008, the University College building was renamed Taylor Hall in his honor.
“He laid the foundation for what we’ve become,” Bob White, the current chair of the department of sociology at IUPUI, said. “I hope that we have done him justice.”