University News Chum: UCLA, UC Berkeley, Emerson
Today’s lunchtime news chum brings together a number of articles related to happenings on campus:
- UCLA. A mural that has been covered up for at least 20 years (they say it was covered up in 1992, but I have no recollection of it from the 1980s) may soon be uncovered. The 40-year-old mural is called “The Black Experience,” and it has been blocked from view since installation of a false wall supposedly in the 1990s. The mural is currently located next to Panda Express on the first floor of Ackerman Union (perhaps this is why I never saw it - I never ate in the 1st floor dining comments - I ate the food at the Coop on the “A” level). The mural portrays the faces of the seven original artists of the mural. Within the shadows of the artists’ faces are superimposed images of key figures and events in black history, leaving the effect that these images make up the faces of the artists. The mural is an artifact of the 1970 Kent State riots, and the demonstrations at UCLA afterwards. After the protests subsided, seven graduate and undergraduate art students collaborated to design and create the mural. Students want to either relocate or restore the mural because they value its depiction of the historical black experience on campus, and because it is a reminder of social activism at UCLA.
- UC Berkeley. Disney has a new movie coming up: Monster University. Evidently, the campus as MU is based on the UC Berkeley campus. There appear to be glimpses of the Campanile in images of a reworked Sather Gate, and there might even be some buildings worked in as well. Pixar has stated that Berkeley was one of the schools it used to design its imaginary one.
- Emerson College. A fraternity at Emerson College has raised money for one of their own. That’s no surprise. What is surprising is the purpose: so this fraternity member may undergo a sex change operation from female appearance to male appearance. That’s cool, and it reflects both how some fraternities have changed, and moreover, how society has changed. In another transgender college story, Mission College in the San Francisco Bay Area has a transgender player on their women’s basketball team. This is more of an issue of a man who changed sexes later in life. The problems start early as well. Earlier this week there was the story about how the parents of a transgender 1st grader are having to sue so she can use the girls room - this is under equality laws in Colorado that you would not have seen 10 years ago. There’s also the increasing opposition to Proposition 8 being submitted to the Supreme Court (i.e., increasing support for same-sex marriage) from parties as diverse as Barack Obama, Meg Whitman, and Clint Eastwood.
Music: Once On This Island (Original Cast): “When We Are Wed”
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