Changes In PUC Student Government, PUC-Cast Dissolved

Posted on 08. Feb, 2010 by Peter Katz in Campus

On November 18, last quarter, SA Senate voted to remove the SA office of PUC-Cast from the ballot for this year.  The debate was surprisingly heated, especially given the relative disinterest in PUC-Cast over the last few years.  Several Senators, including Executive Vice President Warrie Layon, expressed a reticence to strike the office completely from existence.  “I’m just not sure that we’re ready to take this action,” the Vice President voiced in the Senate debate.  “I feel like there might be more options.”

President Scott Brizendine and Senator Christina Alba, on the other hand, were rather adamant.  “We’re not voting on anything for this year, and we’re not saying that it can’t come back,” Senator Alba told Senate, “we’re simply saying that in its current state, PUC-Cast is not working.”  Eventually, Brizendine, Alba, and their supporters won out.  PUC-Cast, founded in 2005 by Dustin Comm, is officially no more.

For many, including PUC-Cast editor Avery Lay, the debate was a bit more personal, and a bit more pressing.  Faced with impending charges of failure to uphold his duties, Lay could not seem to help but to project his current unsteady ground onto the debate for the next year. According to the PUC constitution, Lay was responsible for eight video podcast episodes each quarter; he had, as of the meeting, made one, and was arguing that his and Video Yearbook editor Anthony Lavine’s Fusion intro video counted as a second—still shy of the six or seven due by that point.  There had been immanent potential that the Senate meeting would address the potential of impeachment for Lay up until the day of the meeting.

In the end—or, at least, the end at that point—the conflict revolving around Lay was put to rest by off-the-record deals forged between Lay and a few administrative officers of the SA and some key Senators.

Ultimately, however, it matters little.  After one PUC-Cast video of the Christmas tree lighting, and three unproductive weeks of Winter Quarter, in the face of further pressure for impeachment, Avery Lay officially resigned his post as PUC-Cast editor on Monday, January 25.  So ends PUC-Cast.

The PUC-Cast budget was absorbed into the C2 budget, and Assistant Editor Craig Hickerson has been made official C2 Video Editor, with Editorial Director Erika Kim taking his position, and a position to assist him, as Omni-Assistant Editor—officially one of the coolest titles of any SA-affiliated officer.  We will be experimenting with video as a new medium on our website as both a news and an editorial mechanism; look especially for election coverage as we enter into The War for the Campus Center 2010.

This entire situation is wholly indicative of some of the primary issues with our student government as a whole.  America is a republic, and so we feel that any organization, from clubs to SA, should be a republic.  What we fail to realize is that republics are inefficient, bureaucratic, and overall only superficially representative of the desires of the student population.  Had the C2 not called attention to these goings-on, the student body would never know.  PUC-Cast and its convoluted end would have been a blip on an otherwise apathetic radar.

Furthermore, publication editors should not be SA officers.  We at the C2 have been crippled in covering this issue simply because of conflicts of interest, particularly the fact that we work with the other SA officers on a day-to-day basis.  Lay ran unopposed, and was in fact selected post-deadline last year to serve; if a publication is not functioning properly, it should not be mandated by the constitution that we sustain that publication.

We would say it does not ultimately matter, but in reality, it does.  As we have mentioned in previous issues, Senate is currently reconstructing the PUC SA Constitution.  If you find any of these events upsetting, or you want to ensure that things like this go differently, you have the power to do so.  Talk to your senator, email your Executive Vice President, or write to the C2.  If we insist on creating a republic, let us at least do our best to ensure that a republic is what we have created.

On a similar but unrelated note, Video Yearbook Editor Anthony Lavine has been resigned.  Details remain confidential.

Reprise: An Art Review

Posted on 20. Jan, 2010 by Peter Katz in Campus

Rasmussen Art Gallery is one of PUC’s most overlooked treasures.  For those of you who were unaware, we have a full-blown art gallery.  Free.  On campus.  Literally ten seconds away from the Campus Center.  With, like, real art inside.

The newest show at RAG is Reprise: 2010 Howell Mountain Juried Art Exhibition, featuring community artists.  If you have even fifteen minutes on your way from the library to the Campus Center, and the gallery is open (hours below), you should absolutely stop by.  If you need a preview, the C2 is at your service.

With apologies to all our photo-major readers, photography has never much moved me.  I will say, however, that several of the pieces in Reprise actually spoke to me.  Craig Philpott’s Bridges (first place, photography) and Engine 4 are brilliant industrial shots; Bridges especially is a brilliant amalgamation of a natural lake or river, an industrial bridge—it may be a railroad of some sort—and a more contemporary bridge that has that almost-pristine shimmer of sci-fi utopia, all intersecting in the center of the piece.  Several of the nature photos, particularly Robert Wilson and the Schooleys (doesn’t that sound like an awesome band name?) have fantastic play with light, and are definitely worth appreciating.

One of the most prominent pieces in the gallery is Deborah Kaye Marks’s oil painting Goth Cove Moonscape, the title of which is fairly self-explanatory—a gothic (in the early Romantic sense) moonscape over a tumultuous sea that would have made Byron and Shelly wet themselves with excitement.  Wilma Dobias’s western landscapes-plus-bear are vaguely Whistler-meets-Van-Gogh-somewhere-in-Oregon, and along with Gil Mance’s oil portraits Sunset, Howell Mountain and Spring Morning, Pope Valley (second place, photography), give a definite local, Northern California feel to the show.  While I honestly did not quite appreciate Gay Bell’s Chateau St. Jean (first place, painting) when I first looked at it, as I sat in the middle of the gallery writing this review, I realized that the colors and shading make it look positively three dimensional; make sure to view this piece from a reasonable distance to enjoy it to the fullest.

Generally, I find myself more of a painting or mostly-two-dimensional mixed-media person—and speaking of which, let me take this moment to point out that Thomas Morphis’s mixed-media Transformative is absolutely brilliant—but Reprise contains some absolutely phenomenal three-dimensional art.  William John Callnan III’s The Proposal, a chaotic piece that absolutely flings itself onto the viewer, is brimming with more intricacy than even two or three looks-over can comprehend.  John McDowell’s Reading the Bible Series: Alarm is rather what the name says, but I still want to save the surprise; sometimes simple compositions bear the most complex weight.  There is little doubt in my mind that McDowell’s sculpture Angel of Regret deserves its Best of Show award.  Up on its pedestal, it strikes an imposing, heart- and gut-wrenching image (though I do wish that the curator would have placed it so it could be better viewed from the seating in the center of the gallery).  I recommend sitting on the floor directly in front of the piece; people will only look at you funny until they try it.  While all of McDowell’s angel sculptures are moving and aesthetically brilliant, this is perhaps the best of them.

The exhibition opened January 9, and will run until February 4.  The gallery is open Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday from 1-5pm.  Go.  Now.  Unless it isn’t 1-5pm on the above dates, in which case, go later.  But go.  And thank you to the artists of Angwin, and the Rasmussen Art Gallery for providing us with culture at our fingertips.

TLDR: Too Long, Didn’t Read

Posted on 20. Jan, 2010 by Peter Katz in Editorial

It has recently come to our attention here at the C2 that some people have found our previous issues, or at least parts of our previous issues, a bit … excessive.  That is, in terms of verbiage (that means words).

In brief—and yes, I’m trying—there are basically two sides to this argument.  The first side, being the side that I have been on since about freshman year, is that this is an academic paper at an academic institution.  Therefore, this side would argue, the articles in the paper should be academic in nature.  And, of course, this generally means longer articles, bigger words, deeper ideas.  This paper is, as we have declared on many occasions, the forum for campus discussion.

The problem we have encountered, and the argument provided by the second side, is that this is an academic institution, and so frankly, nobody has the time or desire to leave class where they read academic articles, go the caf, and read … academic articles.  While I have a hard time wrapping my twisted mind around this concept, I do think that I vaguely understand; when we’re all busy, brain-dead, and worn out, we don’t feel much like doing further work.

We at the C2 hope to come to some sort of compromise on this issue.  I, as the editor, would like to apologize if we’ve missed our readership’s desire, but I would like to add to that apology a call of sorts: please talk to us!  We’ve received one whole letter-to-the-editor from a student this year, and that student ultimately requested that we discard the letter.  From our position, it seems as though no one is reading—which is dangerous.  Next thing you know, Issue #6 of the paper might be a series of articles on the narratology of textbooks.  At least then we would know that nobody was reading.

In an attempt to find compromise, we have zoomed in a bit, this issue.  We have student interviews, teacher interviews, department interviews, and artist interviews, so that you as PUC can meet more of your fellow PUC-ites.  We hope that by going micro, we might find a bit more interest; sort of an in-depth version of “Back-talk,” for those of you here last year.  If PUC  (being you) wants, we could keep this up all year.

But we don’t want to overcompensate.  We do feel that our deeper articles have struck a higher-quality tone, set a new standard for journalism with the SA paper.  In the end, though, it really is up to you—maybe.  If you want more of the heavy-hitting stuff, let us know.  If you prefer the lighter, more personal element, let us know.  If you don’t tell us anything, we will have to assume that nobody is reading, and we may just start printing pages with smiley faces scribbled on them.  Email us at editor.c2puc@gmail.com, drop a letter in our box (we’re in the back of the Campus Center), or even better, write something for us.  Get in touch with your paper.

And trust me, when I threaten to fill the next issue with narratology articles, I could do it.  If you don’t know what narratology is, or don’t want to know, talk to us!

YAF, or Why Conservatives are not Evil

Posted on 18. Nov, 2009 by Peter Katz in Campus

Americans have no concept of politics.

Dr. David Trim, a visiting professor from England, in explaining his political affiliation, told us, “In England, there are two parties.  There are the Whigs, who are like the Democrats, and the more conservative Tories, who are like the Democrats.”  In short, the American notion that Democrats are liberals and Republicans are conservatives—perhaps more importantly, that those equations can be reversed, yielding the notion that conservatives are Republican and liberals are Democrats—is unfortunately US-centric.

A quick political science lesson.  “Conservative” has nothing inherently to do with religion, having a lot of money, being from the South, or owning rifles.  “Liberal” has nothing inherently to do with global warming, health care, being from New York, or being anti-war.  Conservative philosophy, which is what concerns this article, has to do with retention of tradition and community through continuity.  Much of conservative philosophy has roots in Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, in which he outlines a position claiming that society is the giving up of rights in order to protect from mob rule, and that the government gives back certain rights; he ridicules the French for throwing off tradition in favor of abstract rights he claims do not exist as natural givens.

One of the major players in modern conservatism was William Buckley, who constructed a conservatism based on principles the retention of American traditions such as free market, limited federal power, and social order.  These notions are, ironically enough, principles of political liberalism (absolutely not in the sense of American politics), which stresses individual freedom and free market; clearly, no definition is stable, since the definition of the modern conservative rings true with the early French Revolution and the policy makers following American Revolution—who were labeled as liberals by the rest of Europe.  Liberal and conservative, in practice, are not even necessarily opposites; our tradition was two centuries past’s liberalism.

Our campus recently started a chapter of Young Americans for Freedom, a national organization that supports a model similar to Buckley and Burke’s conservatism (but, of course, different; history, contrary to popular opinion, does not repeat itself so linearly as to make ideological clones).  YAF’s statement of purpose includes declarations that “political freedom cannot long exist without economic freedom,” that, “when government ventures beyond these rightful functions [internal order, national defense, justice], it accumulates power, which tends to diminish order and liberty,” and that “when government interferes with the work of the market economy, it tends to reduce the moral and physical strength of the nation.”  In short: free market, small central government, and personal liberty as perceived through economic agency.  In shorter: conservatism.

The primary problem with American politics, if I may be so bold as to declare such a ridiculous statement, is not partisanship, but rather, blind partisanship.  The notion that to be a conservative (and therefore, in the American mind, a Republican) to the American means that one must be anti-gay-marriage (and therefore a homophobe), anti-big-government (and therefore hate poor people), anti-abortion (and therefore a misogynist), and pro-social-order via morality (and therefore a religious nutcase).  Conservatism as an ideology says nothing explicitly about homophobia, nothing about abortion, nothing about religion, nothing about class.  But the American political mind feels that, since conservative = Republican, all of these assumptions must be true.

What makes this problem so virulent is the reactionary nature of American politics, and politics in general.  It is safe to assert that many Americans did not much appreciate George W. Bush’s administrative policies; it is unfortunately more accurate to assert that a good deal of Americans hated George W. Bush because it was the thing to do.  After Clinton, it was cool to be conservative; after Bush, it is cool to be liberal.  The war in Iraq and Afghanistan had little to do with conservative politics – except the notion of aggressive foreign policy – and more to do with the Bush administration.  One would note that there are still troops in both countries; clearly, the real world is a little more complicated than Republican and Democrat.  Nevertheless, because we are so reactionary, somehow, to be a Republican is to be closed minded, to hate humanity in general, particularly minorities and freedom (ironic, no?).

My point, therefore, is that conservative does not yield evil: Republican does not yield evil, and more importantly, conservative does not yield Republican.  American political parties are (supposedly) an amalgamation of stances on specific issues that may or may not have to do with conservatism or liberalism, and may even be contradictory (abortion and the death penalty being the pedantic examples).  YAF represents a modern conservative ideology regarding the market, the power of the federal government, and American tradition.  To claim that a conservative group is a hate group is to be blind to the greater questions of politics and the recognition that “Republican” and “Democrat” as we know them are recent inventions with only tangential correlation to the fundamentals of conservatism/democracy/liberalism.

YAF is an organization of students who believe in American tradition, free market, and limited federal government, not a hate group.  There is perhaps no one so closed-minded as the American alleged liberal who hates the very notion of conservatives (or Republicans) simply because they are not Democrats.  Such a person is neither liberal, nor conservative – simply ignorant.

Plane Crashes at Angwin Airport — Sort of

Posted on 29. Oct, 2009 by Peter Katz in Campus, Community

A private plane taxiing on the runway at the Angwin Airport miscalculated the direction of the runway and collided with a chain link fence near some empty metal containers adjacent to the runway.  No one was seriously injured.

Photo by Matthew Hardesty

Gallery Hopping on Main Street

Posted on 27. Oct, 2009 by Peter Katz in Community

Perhaps art galleries are only for snobby intellectuals, but I have bad news for all of you: simply by going to college, you are taking part in a long tradition of snobby intellectuals from the classical Mid-East to Charlemagne to Oxford and Cambridge. Own it.

Frankly, as far as art galleries go, St. Helena is one of the best places to hone your snobby intellectualism, or to begin to come to terms with it. On Main Street alone, there are no less than four formal art galleries, and several more if you expand your definition of gallery—and all of them are free.

Caldwell Snyder

My personal favorite as far as my taste in genre, Caldwell Snyder is about halfway down the first section of Main Street. The gallery has a contemporary leaning, with a movement toward emerging artists that makes it the most radical gallery in St. Helena. Caldwell Snyder is more than just a gallery; it is, according to according to gallery employee and PUC alumna Katie Hopgood, a “cultural epicenter,” featuring humanitarian and intellectual exhibits as well, such as an impending lecture series. The gallery tends to have a good deal of geometric and fluid abstraction with the vivid colors and busyness typical of the late twentieth century, as well as some decent neo-impressionism and simply phenomenal surrealist paintings. Current displays include sculptures by Greg Miller, and a series of fascinating absurdist—though, according to the artist, not surrealist, because all of the instances are potentially feasible, no matter the improbability—works by Ukrainian artist Ilya Zomb. The gallery has an upper-class feel, though its amicable employees make one feel comfortable. If modern art is your thing, then Caldwell Snyder is a must-visit; the exhibits tend to rotate with some frequency, so it is worth dropping by several times over the year.

I. Wok

Another favorite, the I. Wok gallery has a more “conservative” slant to its art, according to one of the employees. Works here tend to be representative or concrete, though generally via intriguing and novel methods. There remain a few paintings from an artist who does flowers with pictures from magazines (often shocking pictures, which makes it all the more interesting), and some of the impressionist paintings I have seen previously were obscure almost to the point of abstraction, yet profoundly concrete. There is also a good bit of sculpture—currently, a series of birds and fruit that appeal even to my preference for surrealism and abstraction, while still remaining definitely concrete. The ambiance sits somewhere between a formal museum and a small-town gallery, and the combination is both friendly and formal. This gallery is a safe and worthwhile stop on your journey into art galleries.

Art on Main

If the museum style of I Wok and Caldwell Snyder intimidate you, Art on Main is a brilliant starting point. While still very much an art gallery, the architecture of the gallery is such that it feels far more private, separating you from the front desk and other art-surveyors, and not like you need to be wearing a full suit or evening gown (though we do like formal wear). The gallery is “a little bit of everything” according to manager Suzanne Perkins, with a leaning toward “area” artists, though it includes national and international art as well. Currently, Art on Main has some outstanding impressionist paintings, and a good bit of pastoral—specifically Napa Vally-esque—representative painting and sculpture. The gallery is very focused on the experience of the viewer, with design and setting intentionally created to ensure an atmosphere of comfort and accessibility.

Christopher Hill

We will be frank: we intended to go to the Christopher Hill gallery, but we were running short on time, and it happens to be closed on Tuesdays, which is both when we went down, and the day before we need our final copy. Based on what I have seen before, once you get over the feeling of trespassing through the little door and stairwell, the gallery itself is well-worth visiting. The artwork lands nicely in the center between radical and conservative, with a little on both ends, and a solid mix of genre. Construction itself encourages something between a formal museum feel and a more intimate experience. The artists featured tend to be nationally and internationally renowned, and therefore of exceptional quality. Definitely worth your time; fear not the stairs.

Other galleries

Several stores on Main Street like Findings, Martin (M.), etc. are eclectic and set up with an eye for design and display. While they may not consider themselves galleries, or others may not consider them galleries, they most certainly could be. While on your tour of St. Helena’s art, I suggest dropping by some of these stores as well.
So get on your collared shirt or nice blouse, puff yourself up with intellectual confidence, and go forth to check out the culture St. Helena offers. With so much talent and beauty at our fingertips, it would be a shame for PUC-ites to miss these opportunities.

A Local Boutique with a Global Mission

Posted on 27. Oct, 2009 by Peter Katz in Community

Humanitarianism does not have to take place in the context of Amnesty International or Revo—it can be a part of daily consuming.

Baksheesh, on Main Street in St. Helena, is a Fair Trade store with an emphasis on humanity over consumption. Managed by Katie Schnable, a sociology graduate from Washington D.C., Baksheesh is dedicated to creating sustainability by purchasing from artisans across the globe via fair trade.

“Fair trade” is a mode of business in which artisans are paid a “livable wage in their community,” according to Schnable, an amount which may vary from country to country, but ensures education, health care, sustenance, and shelter for the workers. The store seeks to “partner with artisans on long term” said Schnable, in order to ensure consistency in funding for the workers. Within the Fair Trade Federation – a collective of vendors dedicated to fair trade – Baksheesh contacts fellow vendors, who then contract with the artisans in order to ensure sustainability on a global, marketable scale.

Schnable founded the store because, to her, fair trade “just makes sense.” It is her goal to raise social awareness about the way consumers take consumption for granted, and to reveal the facets of social justice embedded in spending and shopping. For example, when one purchases something from Baksheesh, one is given the choice between a bag and a piece of chocolate. “Eventually we want people to take neither, but right now, the reward system works,” Schnable explains, but the point is to get people to think about things like from where their grocery and shopping bags come, and the global effects of such mass consumerism.

A good part of Baksheesh and Schnable’s mission is to provide access to information that bestows a “different way to see the world,” from maps that call into question the Euro-centric tradition by demonstrating that such a view of geography is not a given, or a particularly fascinating map that proportions country size by population. In addition, one can purchase the “Better World Hand-guide” similar to the text sold by David Bastone from the Not-For-Sale campaign that made waves at PUC through Revo two years previous. The handbook lists major corporations and companies in various modes of production, rating them on a scale of fair trade, slave labor, and other humanitarianly-minded aspects.

On top of all of the good intentions, Baksheesh has an eclectic and fantastic array of clothing, decorations, and artwork, from scarves to items one may never have before seen, but will make one wish that one had. Items come from Nepal, Peru, Guatemala, Ecuador, Bolivia, India, Indonesia, South Africa, and Kenya, to name a few of the widespread locales. Pricing is quite affordable, and it always makes me feel better to know that, to quote Schnable, my money “is going to a family in Nepal for food, rather than a guy in Southern California for a Mercedes.”

As Christians, as intellectuals, as students of humanity at a liberal arts college, it is our duty to be conscious that, as Schnable puts it, “Where you spend your money is where you cast your vote.” Not only is this in part true in the bipartisan political sense, but more importantly, money spent for fair trade is a vote for humanity over consumption, for people over corporations, for sustainability over social stratification. So cast your vote for humanity through Baksheesh, and make some “good” purchases in every sense of the word.

Student Suspended over Crude Video

Posted on 22. Oct, 2009 by Peter Katz in Campus

The following information is an account based on a phone interview with Robert Curnutte at 12:53pm on Thursday, 22 October 2009. All facts and opinions expressed – aside from the general, official statements made by the administration – are based on information from Curnutte’s perspective. All administration is bound by FERPA confidentiality, and must therefore officially decline to comment or acknowledge any case.

For intramurals, Robert Curnutte (sophomore) and his teammates named their team “Triple Thick Protein Shake.” According to Curnutte, when Coach Bob Paulson was in the process of examining the appropriateness of the teams’ names, he came across a video Curnutte had made in his Newton dorm room last year. In the video – which has been removed from the site – Curnutte talked about a prank involving a high school classmate, a milkshake, and bodily fluid. Curnutte maintains that the actual event never happened, and was merely capitalizing on a rumor that had circulated his senior year of high school.

As Curnutte tells it, Paulson first contacted the team captain, and then called in Curnutte. He allegedly conveyed that he found the video distasteful, and told Curnutte to expect a call from the deans. Curnutte met with the deans, who purportedly questioned him for approximately an hour. “It felt like I was going to get a slap on the wrist,” Curnutte says of the meeting.

Three days later, at 6:00pm, Curnutte says he received a call telling him to report to PUC’s Judicial Committee at 1:00pm the next afternoon. Curnutte reports feeling that “I didn’t have enough time to get an advocate,” and after the meeting, he felt that it would be “useless” to get one for the second, because he felt as though the only remaining question was “what should we do to punish you?”.

Curnutte says that the committee brainstormed punishments, and had him formulate a proposal for possible punishments. He proposed counseling, community service, and Bible studies, in an effort to, as he put it, “seem remorseful and try to come to some sort of conclusion.” At 9:00pm that night, Curnutte says he received an email sent at 7:30pm informing him that he had been suspended, and needed to vacate the premises for three days. According to Curnutte, his father had to “borrow money from my grandparents” to come and retrieve him and take him to their home.

In addition to suspension, Curnutte says that the Judicial Committee is requiring him to talk with the individual about whom the video was made. Curnutte says the individual has “never seen the video,” and does not attend PUC.

Dr. Lisa Bissell Paulson, head of PUC’s Judicial Committee this year, is by law not allowed to comment on any specific case, and officially declined to confirm or deny the existence of any judicial case at this time. She did give this statement: “For any judicial system that we deal with, we prayerfully deliberate and make decisions that are consistent with what we’ve done before, and that we hope will be right for the student and the college’s best interest.”

In the case of any judicial matter, she also directed all inquiries with this statement: “Every student has signed an agreement to abide by the expectations of the college, and that information and the whole process and procedure can be found online the student handbook.” Curnutte maintains that Judicial Committee informed him that he has violated the fourth responsibility in the Student Life Agreement found in the Student Handbook, which reads: “To maintain high standards of taste and decency in conduct, expression and citizenship.”

In addition to a Facebook group, there is circulating on campus a student petition that claims that Curnutte did not receive due process. Student judicial rights are on page 38 and 39 in the Student Handbook.

Facing the Light: Ethnicity, Community, and Exclusivity

Posted on 11. Oct, 2009 by Peter Katz in Debate

C2 was planning on writing an article about ethnicity and clubs.  Peter Katz asked Bryonn Bain about it, and we decided that his response was better than anything we could come up with.  Below is an excerpt of that interview. – JP

C2: One of the topics we’re bringing up for discussion in this issue is ethnicity, specifically how clubs on campus have a tendency to be divided by ethnicity.  Do you have any thoughts on that?

BB:  Wow, okay, this is going to be totally off the top of my head.  I do think that one of the most exciting things about college is that you have a privilege that most people don’t have: to spend four years reading books, writing papers to refine your ideas about what you think about those books and about the world, about what is truth, justice, freedom, spirituality.  It’s important to have a marketplace of ideas that’s as open as possible to really exchange those ideas, so that you can have the greatest, most diverse pool of thought to pull from.  I think it’s inevitable that as institutions like higher education that are “traditionally” white form begin to become more diverse, there will be groups that are based on ethnicity to make them stronger, to make them better able to deal with an institution that is not used to dealing with their experience.  Many social movements go from identity to social interest; once you figure out who you are, you work to moving toward interests.  Common interests may ultimately link multiple ethnicities together.  It’s important folks don’t get stuck, but its’ important for them to have a process, to have an internal conversation within their community.  One of my friends worked at a rape crisis center, and she says that women who experience domestic violence often times move to closed ranks, to a circle of just women.  They prefer not to have men as a part of the process.  I had a student who was raped, and I was one of the first people she called, asking how to deal with the police and so forth—but I wouldn’t expect her way of dealing with a crisis to be everyone’s way.  For the young women who don’t want men involved, I think it’s important to have that space.  Racism, like sexism, also creates trauma; it is an assault, it also creates violence—sometimes psychological, sometimes emotional, sometimes physical.  Take, for example, the constant indoctrination of “white Jesus.”  It’s in part a matter of historical accuracy—we know there weren’t any Scandinavians hanging out in the Holy Land at that time—and if we didn’t have this sort of history of problems, we could not be bothered about it.  But it’s consistent with the legacy of white supremacy.  Those kind of symbols that many institutions, including the church, have not fully dealt with yet—those are the reason that we absolutely need to have groups based on ethnicity to figure out how to challenge these things.

[…]

It’s like the allegory of the cave [Plato]; you come out of the cave, step out of the shadows, and the sun burns your eyes because you see the light.  There’s a reaction, there’s pain, there’s fear.  In some ways, I think that pain is a necessary part of what this experience should be in college.  I think people who are in tune with one another should understand that there are times when those people need to be within their groups, so that they can deal with that pain, that growth, in hopes that at some point in time, there will be a space for those groups to work together.

The Man Behind the Lyrics: An interview with Bryonn Bain

Posted on 11. Oct, 2009 by Peter Katz in Interview

Bryonn Bain interviewd by Peter Katz

C2: Race and ethnicity play a big part in your show.  Tell us a little about your family background.

BB: My family is like the United Nations.  My mom’s side is South Asian; she came to Trinidad from India.  My dad’s side came to Trinidad from West Africa.  So I’m Asian, I’m African… I grew up in Panama, […] speaking Spanish and English.  I’ve also traveled pretty extensively throughout Latin America.

C2: So, how did you get started doing spoken word/hip hop?

BB: I grew up performing.  My dad was a calypso singer, who won his way to New York City.  Calypso is Trinidad’s gift to the world.  I remember being seven years old singing “Matilda, Matilda…” [laughs]  I had no idea that there was some serious patriarchal implications; it’s like old-school “Gold digger.”  Calypso singers have names like rappers […] one of my favorites was a guy named Black Stalin.  My favorite song of his was all about evil and the afterlife, all the folks in the world who have been greedy getting their just deserts.  I grew up with that [calypso music], so it was inevitable.  My brothers and I began performing in high school talent shows, and then in local prisons during the holidays.  For us, it was a great time to connect with folks who would really appreciate it—[laughs] I mean, they’ve got nowhere to go, it’s a captive audience, right?  I had no idea that a decade later, after going to prisons around the country to raise awareness in local communities about how devastating the prison system is to society, I would have an encounter with the NYPD that would lead me to suing them.

C2: Outside of your cultural background, what else has influenced you in your work; specifically, which artists and genres?

BB:  I’ve been in singing groups, hip hop bands, writing poetry since elementary school.  As a kid, my first rappers and poets were people like Rock Kim, Microphone Fiend … What I admired was their ability to speak intelligently through music in a way that was not preachy, but was really captivating and spoke to the realities of folks who didn’t’ have a lot of access to material wealth, but who had an abundance of spiritual wealth to give to the world.  Later on, people lie Queen Latifah in her early days, Lauryn Hill, MC Light, Run DMC, LL Cool J, the Jackson 5.  On the other hand, I have a lot of more “traditional influences.”  My English teacher in either 7^th or  8^th grade gave us The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe, and I read the line about “tap tap tapping on my door” and I was like, “This guy’s rapping in the nineteenth century.”  Other poets like Langston Hughes…that whole movement; the music of jazz singers like Billie Holiday Nina Simone, Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith.  My dad had really eclectic musical tastes.  Obviously, there was a lot of calypso, but he also played reggae…anything from Led Zeppelin and the Grateful Dead, to Chopin and Bach and Mozart.  Just this last week, I worked some classical music into the show.  I think it not only provides a really profound contrast, but it demonstrates the wider whole of the human experience, how everything ties in.

C2: Can you explain that a little more?

BB: Hip hop and theater audiences traditionally aren’t the same audience.  Hip hop appears in the inner city with Black and Latinos in the early nineteen hundreds; classical music is music that came out of Europe from 1500-1900—and that’s the period during which my ancestors were being enslaved.  I think contrasting what’s seeing as “high civilization” with what has unfortunately received the stereotype of being “low civilization” or “low art” shows on some level that they come from a similar human need to express something that’s beyond ourselves.

C2: I know that part of your play deals with a potentially wrongfully imprisoned man on death row whose sentence may be commuted to life.  Is there any news on his case?

BB:  Nanon Williams was incarcerated at seventeen for murdering someone during a bad drug deal.  He’s admitted that he was part of the drug deal, but insists that he has not killed that person.  For the last five years a newspaper revealed a series of fabrications revealing a lot of botched evidence in both his case and others involving the Houston Police Department. He’s having a new hearing around his case; his attorneys have gotten the court to rehear his case on  January 11 of next year.  There’s another man, Troy Davis, in a similar predicament.  Seven out of nine witnesses in his case have recanted.  When seven of nine say that they were lying…[unamused laugh].

The point is, though, even killing someone who has committed murder isn’t justice.  We should be thinking of restorative justice.  An eye for an eye is barbarous.  Their cases are important, but they also raise the question, “what kind of society do we want to be?”  Should one of the most modernized societies in the world still be using medieval methods to deal with social problems?  Especially when it’s been established that the criminal justice system disproportionately incarcerates, murders, etc. people of color.  It’s important to raise awareness where people would doubt a person of color, just because they might say that you’re only upset because that person looks like you.

C2: There are a couple of main themes that run through your show—race/ethnicity, the human experience, what it means to be an artist, an African-American—what do you think are some of the most important themes?

BB: I think there are a few themes that run throughout the show.  One of the main themes appears right at the beginning: things are often not what they seem.  All too often, we see people on the outside, take things at surface value, when in reality, there are always sublevels, I mean layers and layers […].  It’s wrong to suggest that people are anything otherwise, that we aren’t multiple layers; people of other backgrounds are of a far more complex background than we know.  At the same time, at some point, we have this common essence.  Some people believe that we are our bodies that have a soul.  I don’t.  I don’t think we have a soul, I think we are a soul, and our souls have these bodies.  If you have that basic point, that we have the is underlying spirit that’s beyond all this, that—at least for me—forces me to not assume that I understand the journey of someone else’s soul, however many years, decades, hundreds of years that might be.  I think that the show is getting that the idea that, though it’s almost cliché to say that we can’t judge a book by its cover, we forget, we need to be reminded of it.  Give folks the benefit of the doubt, motivating folks beyond what we see on the surface of things.

Another overall theme is the of the inhumanity of a society that is the most powerful, most technologically advanced society in history, yet still feels the need to strip more people of their rights than any other country.  I mean, they put a 17 year old kid on death row; that just doesn’t happen with white kids.  If white men were incarcerated with the frequency of black and brown, it would be a national crisis; we’d have analysts trying to figure out how to solve the problem.  But that’s the thing.  We weren’t brought here to become the president, we were brought here to be exploited.  That calls for a central message of human justice.  At the same time that I have all these serious topics, there’s a whole lot of humor, because we have to laugh to keep from crying.  I certainly don’t take these topics lightly, but humor is an aid, a part of the process.

In the end, it comes down to the idea that “We are because I am”; there is no individual without his or her community.  I think the piece is showing that.  [Being wrongfully incarcerated] was an experience that changed my life, and so it’s an iteration of that experience and the folks to had the greatest influence on my life.