san francisco murals

Hi All,

Below is my video about Precita Eyes and murals in San Francisco.

~Julia

Excerpt from The Last Graduation

This film is about the closing of many of the prison education programs.

Prison Focus Week

So I wanted to take advantage of this space to let you all know about the Prison Focus Week. We have some really interesting people coming to speak to us throughout the week and, next weekend, is our yearly Green Haven Reunion. If you are interested in the criminal justice system, have taken Mamiya’s class or just want to learn more, please come by!

Monday, March 31:
7pm in the AULA
Opening of the Prison Art Exhibit. Calvin Frett who works on the Peter Black Prison Art Collective is going to set up his work in the AULA. Come to our opening, or just stop by the AULA during the week. The exhibit will be open on Tuesday and Thursday from noon to 5pm, on Wed. from noon to 9pm and on Friday from 5 to 7 pm.

Tuesday, April 1:
5:30pm in Taylor 203
Mary-Beth Pfeiffer will speak about her book “Crazy in America: The hidden tragedy of our criminalized mentally ill”. A former editor of the Poughkeepsie Journal, Ms. Pfeiffer did a series of investigative articles exposing the treatment and problems of the mentally ill in N.Y. State Prisons. As a sign of her success, she is now permanently banned from N.Y. State prisons.

Thursday, April 3:
5:30pm in the ALANA Center
Karla Brundage, an English major at Vassar (class or 1989) will be doing a poetry reading from her first published poetry collection, “Swallowing Watermellons”. She tracks her life experiences as a biracial young woman, a single mother, and an artist activist. She has participated in Poetic Protests, and teaches poetry to youth in the penal system, as well as men and women in maximum-security prisons.

Saturday, April 5:
10:30 am to 5pm, AULA
Green Haven Reunion! This annual event brings together formerly incarcerated men from Green Haven and Otisville prisons, formerly incarcerated women, Vassar alums who worked with them, community activists on prison issues, and current students, faculty, and administrators in a day long focus on prison issues. We will have workshops in the afternoon, which people are more then welcome to participate in. The workshops will be: “College Prison Program at Vassar”, where we will discuss efforts to get Vassar to teach classes in prisons, “Women in Prison”, where we will discuss the experiences of women in the criminal justice system, and a workshop with people from Drop the Rock (the coordinator and other Vassar alums involved in the program are coming to Vassar!), who work on repealing the Rockefeller Drug Laws.

Please come!
Juliana

<3 technology, right?

after seemingly an eternity of trying to get this monster of a file to upload on veoh since you can't upload videos longer than 10 minutes on youtube, i finally have found success.

here is my project. it runs about 12 mins. but there's good stuff in it, i swear.

alana


Online Videos by Veoh.com

My Video

Here's my attempt at creating a video. It's very short and simple, as I've never made a video before. It's basically a juxtaposition of a promotional view and an experiential view of Vassar. I found the Vassar promotional slide show on youtube, which I thought was laughable, and then a couple experiential videos about Vassar made by students (which show the realistic things like co-ed bathrooms and stealing from the retreat). I wanted to put text in to explicate it more, but imovie was being difficult and wasn't letting me. Anyways, here's the video:

-Lindsay

Disney = Children's Media?

This is a video of clips from Disney's The Lion King, Return to Neverland, and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. All of the clips were found on Youtube.




I picked these clips in particular because I thought it was interesting how children's stories can come across depending on whether the story is read in a book, or viewed on screen as a movie. In regards to films, it might also matter whether a film is live-action or animated. I think that depending on the form, the amount of violence, or things like death and murder in these stories is either amplified or toned down. I originally had five clips saved on a play list before deciding on the three I used, so if you're interested in viewing the whole play list, here it is:



-Laura

The Sad, Lonely Life of Jon Arbuckle

I was browsing through BoingBoing (a sweet site full of tasty internet miscellany) a while ago and I came across a posting about Garfield Minus Garfield. This is a daily comic created by removing any traces of the orange feline from classic Garfield strips. The result is a sad, hilarious, and usually creepy look into the mind of a guy who has chosen to spend most of his day talking to his cat. The creator himself considers it a meditation on "schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life." All interesting themes, to be sure, and the strip certainly does make you think. By removing the personable furball from the strip, the relationship between pet and owner is stripped away, and we are forced to consider Jon as a real individual. How would we react to him if he wasn't accompanied by a cartoon cat who talks and, what's more, makes witty quips? I like this little piece of alternative media, because it creates an entirely new perspective on a well-established cartoon personality by simply removing a key piece of context. I loved Garfield growing up, and I always loved Jon's outbursts and nerdy episodes; this is just icing on the cake.

"Hopes for Wireless Cities Fade..."

I have been doing research on “digital citizenship” for a class called “Democratic Engagement” and in my reading I came across this passage: “Mark Warschauer…identifies a number of literacies associated with computer and Internet use which he argues are necessary for social inclusion in the information age. Skills vary widely including information literacy (the ability to find, evaluate, and use information online) and technical competence” (Mossberger et al. 14). Mossberger et al. later argue that in order to develop these skills necessary for social inclusion and citizenship, people must have a considerable familiarity with the internet, and computers in general, which only comes from frequent and informed use. This is why nation-wide efforts for free or discounted municipal wi-fi—particularly in poor neighborhoods—are so critical as launching points for broader technological literacy that facilitates democratic engagement and inclusion among largely disenfranchised low-income populations. And why this recent article in the New York Times is so disheartening:

"Hopes for Wireless Cities Fade as Internet Providers Pull Out"

Polina

"...this Gaza!"

A video collage of news footage from Gaza, focusing on children and the recent attention on Hamas TV's programming. "...this Gaza" refers to Ghassan Kanafani's Letter from Gaza (1956), from Men in the Sun and Other Palestinian Stories.

Video sources:

Al Jazeera English, "Gaza's political children's show," 26 Feb 08

Al Jazeera English, "Gaza's lost childhood," 23 Mar 08

CNN Headline News, Glenn Beck Show, 13 Feb 08

Occupation 101: Voices of the Silenced Majority (Documentary, 2006)



- freddy

Moonvertising

Yep - you can probably guess what that word means. Rolling Rock's new advertising campaign claims that they will advertise their beer on the moon, along with any messages others want to put up there. Now, this is almost definitely a hoax, although apparently Coke actually tried to do this back in '99 (the FAA wouldn't let them do it to airplane traffic laws). Still, what does this say about our culture's perspective on nature as terrain yet to be commercialized? And what about the willingness to expand the public sphere to the skies - which will undoubtedly invade private space? Just something to think about - here it is: www.moonvertising.com

Eric

Sucre en Comunidad

A friend of mine went to Venezuela this winter break to do research for his thesis. He came back with a couple of magazines from the “Prensa Alternativa para la Parroquia 23 de Enero” (Alternative Press for the Town of January 23rd) called “Sucre en Comunidad”. These publications are really great. People from the community can all publish in it and they cover a different topic on every publication. One of the publications he brought back talks about “going to the streets”. In it, there are articles on the importance of not throwing garbage on the streets and information on new internet centers open to the public. I thought this was such a great way of engaging a local community in order to talk about issues that are pertinent to the population of 23 de Enero. If you are interested (and can read Spanish), Sucre en Comunidad has a site (http://www.el23.net/principal.htm) and a blog (http://sucreencomunidad.blogspot.com/).

Juliana

Getting Around Po'Town!

SOOOOO, I've been doing some research about the Vassar Community shuttle and would like to include it somehow in our final project. If you guys didn't know, there is a shuttle that leaves from main building every half hour and runs from 2-7 on weekdays. It goes primarily these hours for people with field work, but anyone who goes to Vassar can use it. The shuttle is interesting to me because it is the first of its kind at Vassar. Finally Vassar students can get off campus and go to some pretty cool places farther down on Main Street without a car or taxi e.g. the Muddy Cup (a coffee shop), Twisted Soul (Asian Fusion), Soul Dog (lots of different kinds of toppings and lots of different kinds of hot dogs). Not to mention a couple of art galleries (Cunneen-Hackett Art Center and the Lower Main Street Art Galleries). The Shuttle might even start running to the train station and they are thinking about weekend and evening hours.

So how can we tie this into our final project? I am thinking that we can work this into a zine about Vassar and Poughkeepsie relations. This shuttle could be thought of as a possible solution to the Vassar/Poughkeepsie divide. We could work the opinions of non-Vassar people into this zine as well.
This of course would be only a part of the overarching big final project. What do you guys think?
I would also like to interview people who ride the shuttle and the people in charge of it as well to get a better idea of the whole situation. I've already talked to a number of people though and it seems like a really great thing. You can learn more about it here on the vassar website.

BACK TO NORMAL

After the spike, things have calmed down. So if I say "Ring Rock Star" will it spike again?

Vassar's Tap is Back! (my youtube video)

Hi everyone!
Welcome back from break!

This is the YouTube video I made for our class.
Take Back the Tap is a national campaign to decrease dependence on bottled water and, well, take back the tap!

This is the first video I've ever made of any type. I couldn't stop being amazed by the amount of things I could do from my own personal computer- mixing a song, editing video, inserting subtitles! It made me understand how powerful of a medium YouTube/video production equipment for regular computers really is.

Vassar's Tap is Back!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeCRP-1L-JU

I hope you enjoy it!
Marisa

In case you're interested...

Quarterlife was cancelled after one airing. Couldn't compete with American Idol. (Shocker, I know.) Remaining episodes may one day appear on Bravo.

alana