Truman Students Arrested at Nonviolent Protest

Photo by the LA Times. The two Truman students
are the first and third seated protesters from the right.

For this week's Truman Index, I wrote a feature on two students (one, Greg Fister, an old Prep News comrade) who were arrested during a nonviolent sit-in at the Shaw QuikTrip earlier this month.  For anyone curious about what it is like to be arrested for activism, take a look. Here's the first page (below the Halloween story) and here's the second page. In addition, here's the video referenced in the story showing the police officers using force on Greg to break the line of seated protesters. The Ferguson October events, which included this sit-in, produced a new wave of demonstrations that captured national attention. Depending on the outcome of the grand jury decision, we may soon see even more.

Index Ferguson Feature

Here's the link to my feature for the Truman Index on the Ferguson protests. For those of you who read the perspective that Nick and I wrote for the Prep News, it's mostly similar stuff, but this one is more from my viewpoint as a participant and less as an observer analyzing the situation at a remove, and is therefore a bit more personal to me. I also felt that the need for this kind of work at Truman was greater than at SLUH, since in Kirksville we are hours away from St. Louis, and many of us come from elsewhere and do not have a local angle on the story. 

I wrote this thinking it would just be in my normal opinions page column spot, but they made it a full-spread feature. I'm not sure how I feel about the design above the story, but I'm glad they used some of my pictures (recognize anyone in the bottom left corner?)

More importantly: the #HealSTL office, led by Alderman French, is open as of this morning in Ferguson. They are calling for volunteers from anywhere and everywhere to help work on solutions for St. Louis. Their website is due to launch soon, but their Twitter is live.

The True Confessions of a Teacher's Pet

The most Notebookish of my Index columns so far considers the possible causes of lackluster class discussions and students' reluctance to answer certain questions. I also wrote but did not draw the notebook-scribble info-graphic below the column, which I feel like I should have made either more simple or more obnoxiously complicated. (It's a Catch 22!)

Unraveling Ukraine and Complicating Soccer

Militant Ukrainian protesters, which include both far-right
ideologues and moderate pragmatists. Photo:
Sergey Ponomarev, New York Times.

My last two Index columns have been a bit more political than past ones. In the first, I address the protests in Ukraine as an example of a complex news item that needs research and discussion to unravel. This piece received a very generous letter ("Response to Conor Gearin," middle-right) the next week from a Ukrainian former journalist living in Kirksville (who would have thought?) He cleared up a confusion in the way that I was understanding  the political left in Ukraine: I was using it to mean Ukrainian liberals, those wanting closer ties with the European Union and greater civil liberties, but according to him, to Ukrainians the left means communists more exclusively.

The info about the situation in Kiev is generally still accurate, but check out your favorite international news outlet for updates about what has happened over the past two days. Things are coming to a head, and nonviolent voices are getting edged out on the front lines, though according to the New York Times, nonviolent activists are still in the majority.

In the second piece (bottom of the page), a speech from Fred Gray, Rosa Park's lawyer and longtime activist, caused me to reflect on a place of both diversity and prejudice near me: pickup soccer games at the Student Rec center. Thanks for reading.

Gray Wolves and Black Coffee

The New York Times printed this memorable
image of Ukrainian protesters in Kiev.

I try to vary my columns between trends in the news and personal experience. My first column of the year considered our future with Gray wolves, which are expanding their ranges south as reintroduced populations rebound. This morning's column is one in my unofficial series, Advocacy for Unlovely Causes. The cause this time was rising early in college, which may just get me stoned to death for cultural heresy. Oh well. Next week: making sense of Ukraine from 5,000 miles away.

The Humanities and Sciences Depend on Each Other

My Index column from last week is my small addition to all that's been written about why we should not install medical and neuroscience research labs in all of our Humanities buildings just yet. To me, the debate of whether there is a major that is better, or more necessary for our society to study right now, often misses the point that we need many different ways of thinking to get any task done in any one discipline--be it a paper analyzing the motives of characters in O Pioneers! or a social psychology study on prejudicial attitudes towards a certain ethnic or cultural group. In all fields, we need data and insights from many different sources in order to say anything meaningful about the world. But for a less apologetic take on the need for English majors, and one that I like better than mine, read Adam Gopnik's "Why Teach English?" from the New Yorker this August. We need English students and teachers because people like to read, and to talk about what they read. Why would we need any more defense for the major than that?

Watching the Wheels

On this lazy Friday afternoon, Notebook is just making the wheels go round and round ... and possibly learning the chords for mandolin. Here's the Index column from yesterday about illustrator David Grove and the need for patience that can deal with decades and not just minutes. Hope you all have a good weekend.

Staring Down the Rat

In this week's Index column, I take a look at two poems from the Seamus Heaney collections I picked up earlier this semester, and use them to try to come to terms with processes of change and decay around Kirksville. The column does not mention it, but the poems are from Death of a Naturalist.

Biology Metaphors in Popular Culture

Inspired by Orwell's "Politics and the English Language," in today's column I examine some biological concepts such as "survival of the fittest" and see if the way they are used as metaphors in popular culture actually makes sense anymore.

Index Columns: Truman and Conservation

Last Thursday, I wrote about problems with Bear Creek, the stream that runs through Truman's campus, which the EPA considers an impaired stream. Today, my column considers the benefits of creating a wildlife watching license, as other states have done, that would allow birdwatchers to pay into conservation, which is traditionally supported by hunters and fishers alone. Again, apologies for the lack of paragraph indentation or spacing on the Index website ... Also, the website's teaser for my column describes me as an "enthusiastic" birdwatcher. I don't remember providing such an adjective.