With almost 10% of the United States population having received the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, the healthcare system is facing an unprecedented challenge.

On Wednesday, Feb. 3, Dr. Nisha Botchwey, Associate Professor of City & Regional Planning, moderated a discussion with Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice as part of the Impact Speaker Series about Montgomery Rice’s career in the healthcare field and existing disparities communities of color face that the pandemic has exacerbated.

Montgomery Rice, CHEM ‘83, is the President and Dean of the Morehouse School of Medicine and the founding director of the Center for Women’s Health Research at Meharry Medical College in 2003.

The center focuses on researching diseases that disproportionately impact women of color.

Its founding came from findings of Montgomery Rice’s research.

“One of the things that I started to figure out early on was that women of color were disproportionately impacted by some diseases,” Montgomery Rice said. “We tended to have more fibroids disease, we tended to have more tubal disease and we tended to have more endocrine disorders that prevented us from becoming pregnant. And I started to delve into why that was the case.”

Montgomery Rice’s research in reproductive endocrinology and infertility found a host of reasons for these disparities including lack of access to quality care in a timely manner.

While researching these topics, Montgomery Rice was asked to become the Chair of OB-GYN at Meharry Medical College.

“We were at one of the most historically Black medical schools,” Montgomery Rice said. “Why don’t we really focus on what are the root causes of the disparities that we see in women’s health?”

Montgomery Rice applied for a $10 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant and began to research topics such as reproductive changes, breast cancer and pregnancy.

The main point of all the research was to answer the question of “Why?”

“There were not a lot of people interested in the why of it,” Montgomery Rice said. “They were more so interested in ‘Okay, what can we do to treat it?’ But we were talking about the why.”

“And I think for the number of times that I was told no, I was pushing toward yes, and that resilience and grit, a large part of it were some of the challenges that I had at Georgia Tech.”

While at Tech, Montgomery Rice began her undergraduate education as a CHBE major.

However, she realized during her fourth-year she was dissatisfied with her career path and decided to apply to and attend medical school instead.

“One of the things that I am most proud of [is] that I thought I was empowered enough to change my mind,” Montgomery Rice said. “Because really, I had a job offer. I had co-oped for at least six quarters, I think, and so I was well on my way to becoming a chemical engineer, but I knew that I wasn’t happy.”

After completing her undergraduate degree instead in CHEM to satisfy the prerequisite courses for medical school, Montgomery Rice was accepted into and attended Harvard Medical School.

Discipline has been a habit that Montgomery Rice has carried throughout her career.

“I became the dean at Meharry Medical College. I was the youngest dean in the country, and so I think I was pretty proud of that,” Montgomery Rice said. “… Then to come here [Morehouse School of Medicine] and be named as the Dean and President … I was the first woman of color to be named to lead a free standing medical school.”

Throughout Montgomery Rice’s career, a tool she has used when collaborating is finding similarities to understand others’ stories.

A relevant example of this is the current vaccine distribution and emphasizing the role of different agencies and groups in earning the trust of communities.

“How do we get people to vaccine acceptance? And that begins with acknowledging people’s concerns about mistrust and distrust with the health system and then answering their questions. And when we don’t know, saying we don’t know, but then bringing them back to the data to say ‘Here … these vaccines are another thing in our toolkit to fight this deadly disease,’” Montgomery Rice said.

To ensure a successful rollout, Montgomery Rice emphasized the cognitive diversity at the table. While mathematicians and statisticians are needed to calculate the number of vaccines needed in a community, there are many more necessary parties.

“It doesn’t become a vaccination until you get it in somebody’s arm, so you need to have the community activists, you need to have people who look like the people who you’re trying to get the vaccine in. You need to have people who can talk to people and engage them in a culturally and a linguistic way, such that they understand,” Montgomery Rice said.

Additionally, the historical context must be acknowledged.

“You don’t let that history hold you back from achieving the future, and so it takes people who have diverse experiences and who have diverse thoughts to help us solve these complex problems,” Montgomery Rice said.

One attendee asked about how students can familiarizes themselves to inequalities in the healthcare system. Montgomery Rice recommended students volunteer in a health system.

“Observe the experiences that people have and ask yourself, are the differences that you see in people’s experience based on some physical appearance that the person had,” Montgomery Rice said. “Is it based on something that’s demographically defined?”

Then, she recommends thinking about how you can positively contribute to the solution.

Another attendee asked Montgomery Rice about her experiences of implicit bias in the healthcare industry.

“The reason why you see so much chronicity of that in the Black community is because of the long standing structural and racial barriers to access to care, quality of care, access to food, access to the conditions that allow you to exercise and have preventive health measures,” Montgomery Rice said. “It’s structural and so, I have tried to live my life by recognizing those things, pointing them out and then bringing diverse people around the table for us to create solutions.”

Montgomery Rice and Botcheway agreed that white people at those tables must ask the question of who is not present and whose experience needs to be brought for a complete perspective.

“When you recognize that you have white privilege, and that it may be harmful to another group, what do you do differently that changes the circumstance?” Montgomery Rice said.

The final piece of advice Montgomery Rice gave to attendees is the power of empathy when working with others.

“Why is it that you feel so adamant about this and cannot look at it from a different perspective? What am I missing?” Montgomery Rice said.

A full recording of the complete talk can be found on the Georgia Tech ISLI YouTube page.

“There were not a lot of people interested in the why of it,” Montgomery Rice said. “They were more so interested in ‘Okay, what can we do to treat it?’ But we were talking about the why.”

“And I think for the number of times that I was told no, I was pushing toward yes, and that resilience and grit, a large part of it were some of the challenges that I had at Georgia Tech.”

While at Tech, Montgomery Rice began her undergraduate education as a CHBE major.

However, she realized during her fourth-year she was dissatisfied with her career path and decided to apply to and attend medical school instead.

“One of the things that I am most proud of [is] that I thought I was empowered enough to change my mind,” Montgomery Rice said. “Because really, I had a job offer. I had co-oped for at least six quarters, I think, and so I was well on my way to becoming a chemical engineer, but I knew that I wasn’t happy.”

After completing her undergraduate degree instead in CHEM to satisfy the prerequisite courses for medical school, Montgomery Rice was accepted into and attended Harvard Medical School.

Discipline has been a habit that Montgomery Rice has carried throughout her career.

“I became the dean at Meharry Medical College. I was the youngest dean in the country, and so I think I was pretty proud of that,” Montgomery Rice said. “… Then to come here [Morehouse School of Medicine] and be named as the Dean and President … I was the first woman of color to be named to lead a free standing medical school.”

Throughout Montgomery Rice’s career, a tool she has used when collaborating is finding similarities to understand others’ stories.

A relevant example of this is the current vaccine distribution and emphasizing the role of different agencies and groups in earning the trust of communities.

“How do we get people to vaccine acceptance? And that begins with acknowledging people’s concerns about mistrust and distrust with the health system and then answering their questions. And when we don’t know, saying we don’t know, but then bringing them back to the data to say ‘Here … these vaccines are another thing in our toolkit to fight this deadly disease,’” Montgomery Rice said.

To ensure a successful rollout, Montgomery Rice emphasized the cognitive diversity at the table. While mathematicians and statisticians are needed to calculate the number of vaccines needed in a community, there are many more necessary parties.

“It doesn’t become a vaccination until you get it in somebody’s arm, so you need to have the community activists, you need to have people who look like the people who you’re trying to get the vaccine in. You need to have people who can talk to people and engage them in a culturally and a linguistic way, such that they understand,” Montgomery Rice said.

Additionally, the historical context must be acknowledged.

“You don’t let that history hold you back from achieving the future, and so it takes people who have diverse experiences and who have diverse thoughts to help us solve these complex problems,” Montgomery Rice said.

One attendee asked about how students can familiarizes themselves to inequalities in the healthcare system. Montgomery Rice recommended students volunteer in a health system.

“Observe the experiences that people have and ask yourself, are the differences that you see in people’s experience based on some physical appearance that the person had,” Montgomery Rice said. “Is it based on something that’s demographically defined?”

Then, she recommends thinking about how you can positively contribute to the solution.

Another attendee asked Montgomery Rice about her experiences of implicit bias in the healthcare industry.

“The reason why you see so much chronicity of that in the Black community is because of the long standing structural and racial barriers to access to care, quality of care, access to food, access to the conditions that allow you to exercise and have preventive health measures,” Montgomery Rice said. “It’s structural and so, I have tried to live my life by recognizing those things, pointing them out and then bringing diverse people around the table for us to create solutions.”

Montgomery Rice and Botcheway agreed that white people at those tables must ask the question of who is not present and whose experience needs to be brought for a complete perspective.

“When you recognize that you have white privilege, and that it may be harmful to another group, what do you do differently that changes the circumstance?” Montgomery Rice said.

The final piece of advice Montgomery Rice gave to attendees is the power of empathy when working with others.

“Why is it that you feel so adamant about this and cannot look at it from a different perspective? What am I missing?” Montgomery Rice said.

A full recording of the complete talk can be found on the Georgia Tech ISLI YouTube page.

Additionally, the historical context must be acknowledged.

“You don’t let that history hold you back from achieving the future, and so it takes people who have diverse experiences and who have diverse thoughts to help us solve these complex problems,” Montgomery Rice said.

One attendee asked about how students can familiarizes themselves to inequalities in the healthcare system. Montgomery Rice recommended students volunteer in a health system.

“Observe the experiences that people have and ask yourself, are the differences that you see in people’s experience based on some physical appearance that the person had,” Montgomery Rice said. “Is it based on something that’s demographically defined?”

Then, she recommends thinking about how you can positively contribute to the solution.

Another attendee asked Montgomery Rice about her experiences of implicit bias in the healthcare industry.

“The reason why you see so much chronicity of that in the Black community is because of the long standing structural and racial barriers to access to care, quality of care, access to food, access to the conditions that allow you to exercise and have preventive health measures,” Montgomery Rice said. “It’s structural and so, I have tried to live my life by recognizing those things, pointing them out and then bringing diverse people around the table for us to create solutions.”

Montgomery Rice and Botcheway agreed that white people at those tables must ask the question of who is not present and whose experience needs to be brought for a complete perspective.

“When you recognize that you have white privilege, and that it may be harmful to another group, what do you do differently that changes the circumstance?” Montgomery Rice said.

The final piece of advice Montgomery Rice gave to attendees is the power of empathy when working with others.

“Why is it that you feel so adamant about this and cannot look at it from a different perspective? What am I missing?” Montgomery Rice said.

A full recording of the complete talk can be found on the Georgia Tech ISLI YouTube page.

Nearly 35 years after the release of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” Margaret Atwood pulled back the curtain on Gilead once again in “The Testaments.”

While “The Testaments” is meant to serve as a sequel to Atwood’s 1985 novel, that has since turned into an award winning show streamed exclusively on Hulu, it is not the sequel many readers had in mind. When Atwood originally announced a sequel was coming, many fans anticipated that they would finally learn what happened to the first book’s main character, Offred.

Instead, Atwood decided to pick up the story fifteen years after Offred’s escape attempt from Gilead with three new narrators. The book is told from the point of view of Aunt Lydia, Agnes Jemima and a young girl named Daisy who grew up outside of Gilead. Aunt Lydia’s chapters are told in a personal manuscript format while Agnes and Nicole’s stories are told through testimonies.

Between the three women, the novel expands the reader’s view of how Gilead came to be, and Aunt Lydia’s specific role in the society’s formation as one of the original aunts of Ardua Hall.

The beginning of the novel wastes no time jumping into the action of the story that eventually leads the three narrators to each other in the heart of Gilead by the middle of the book.

Despite the initial confusion readers may face while sorting through the different storylines, Atwood successfully weaves the three stories together to create momentum for the reader.

When one character’s storyline takes a break at the height of a climax to switch narrators, it motivates the readers to barrel through the next fifty pages to get back to the excitement of the individual’s story.

This manufactured inertia combined with Atwood’s gift of storytelling makes the over 400 page novel an easy one to plow through.

What continues to make this series so relevant is the ideologies and events present within the story that parallel our own society.

While some would claim that Margaret Atwood manifested these similarities between “The Handmaid’s Tale” and the current pro-life movement, Atwood has gone on to state during the trailer for her Masterclass program that she did not write anything in her books that had not already happened somewhere in the world.

The eerie parallels continue in “The Testaments” as Aunt Lydia recounts how a staged attack on the United States Capitol left the President and many members of congress dead.

After the events of the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol led by Trump supporters, Aunt Lydia’s section of the novel surpasses the line of speculative fiction and slips into a situation that feels a little too real for comfort for Atwood’s readers.

In true Margaret Atwood fashion, “The Testaments” stands as a beautifully written novel that continues the warnings against totalitarianism that “The Handmaid’s Tale” started. Atwood continues her trend of leaving readers longing for more after yet another unsatisfying ending that leaves the characters’ lives up to the speculation of the Gilead scholars and readers alike.

The 2020 Presidential Election broke many records, including the highest voter turnout since the 1900 election, with over 66% of the eligible voting population participating.

To mark the Inauguration of President Biden on Jan. 20, Kaye Husbands Fealing, Dean of Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts and cybersecurity privacy expert Peter Swire discussed the state of American politics and ways in which technology affects democracy.

Swire is the Elizabeth and Thomas Holder Chair of Law and Ethics at Scheller College of Business and Senior Counsel with Alston & Bird, LLP.

Additionally, he worked with President Clinton as Chief Counsel for Privacy and with President Obama as a member of the Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technology.

Swire began by focusing on the legal implications of posts on online platforms. He explains that while many on the political right fear the potential abuse of a tech company censoring users, others on the left fear the power of a megaphone that could be used to create civil disorder.

“In the United States, you can’t shout fire in a crowded theater,” Swire said. “You can’t incite people to attack their fellow citizens in their government. And by the time you get to insurrection, there have to be legal consequences, or consequences at a minimum, on speech for the platform.”

Next, Swire encouraged listeners to pretend they were given control of a media company and had to decide when to block content. The following situations require serious consideration.

“Let’s say somebody’s advertising fraudulent cures that are going to actually hurt people or do nothing and they’re getting rich from it,” Swire said. “Do you think the site should be able to block these kinds of fraudulent ads?”

For years, T.V. stations and platforms have blocked fraudulent ads. However, what would happen if the content is, instead, a scientific study?

“Sometimes it’s not clear what’s fraudulent. There might be a scientist with a new study who says COVID isn’t really that bad,” Swire said. “Do you block the scientific study? Well, probably you’ll decide no, you don’t block the scientific thing.”

Applying this thinking to the November election, he posed the question of what you, as the controller of the media company, would do if someone claims there was evidence of voting irregularities on election night.

“If you’re the platform, there’s a lot of reason, in that moment of breaking news, to say ‘Well, we don’t really know the facts here yet,’ so you probably let it stay up,” Swire said. “Well, what if you’ve had 60 lawsuits, all of which have come out the same way and the facts seem clear on the other side?”

“At this point, saying the election was stolen looks a lot like disinformation. It looks like it’s known to be a lie.”

The point of thinking about these exercises is to realize that deciding what to do with each post, especially when a company has millions of users, can be challenging.

Swire moved into a legal basis for deciding what to do by examining the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which was published in the earliest days of the Internet and differentiates online platforms from publishers.

“If a user posts a falsehood, Section 230 says Facebook can’t be sued for defamation. It wasn’t Facebook saying it,” Swire said.

The idea of this act was to cut new technology companies a break so they could grow. Now however, a new question has begun to arise — at what point should online platforms be liable?

Swire offered his opinion.

“I do think the companies should have better procedures to address disinformation and fraud and these problems,” Swire said. “… They should have transparency about the terms of service. They have to have algorithms to try to help human judgment.”

Fealing pointed out that algorithms still have issues.

“I think you’re hinting at the term of artificial intelligence methodologies that can be used here, which also have sometimes some biases built in one way or another,” Fealing said. “… I think the technologists need to get at this, but also the social scientists and as you said as well the legal sector as well, in terms of developing some practical solutions.”

Important to these discussions is an understanding of the Rule of Law, an important legal concept relevant to governance.

The Rule of Law states that the powers of the rulers cannot be arbitrary and must be accountable, established and consistent.

“In a democracy, the most important Rules of Law are have fair elections and then follow the election results and if people go to violence to undo that, that is right at the center of breaking the Rule of Law,” Swire said.

Another central part of the American history of the Rule of Law is a peaceful transition of power.

“That’s been true in every other election until this year and this year for weeks and weeks after the election, President Trump refused to say that he was committed to a peaceful transition of power,” Swire said. “He continued to say things that weren’t true about the election that he knew by then were not true.”

The final part of the discussion was on the path forward.

“Mr. Biden received over 81 million votes, the largest number in history. Mr. Trump received more than 74 million votes, the second largest number in history,” Fealing said. “For lots of people is a huge question. How could so many people have voted for the other candidate?”

Swire pointed out this huge turnout clearly shows Americans felt there were many important societal issues riding on the 2020 election.

“Imagine why people might have voted the other way, as strange and weird and unimaginable as that might seem to you,” Swire said.

Swire concluded the talk with some final words of advice.

“Try to understand how a person of good faith could reach the opposite conclusion,” Swire said. “As a lawyer, we’re trained to understand the other side’s best arguments, because that’s gonna let you make your case better.”

Swire connected these ideas to the aforementioned legal concept of the Rule of Law.

“Most importantly, as a nation, I think we have our best chance to reaffirm democracy, to reaffirm the Rule of Law, if we can genuinely try to understand the best arguments of people of good faith, even when they’re on the other side,” Swire said.

Moving forward, Swire encouraged Americans to try to consider other political perspectives.

“They may be politically different from you or political opponents, but they’re not your enemy,” Swire said. “I hope that that continues to be a feature of the American way of doing our lives.”

A recording can be found on the Georgia Tech YouTube page.

Engineering and art are often seen as polar opposites, but this past Monday, Jan. 25, director of GT Arts Aaron Shackelford interviewed alum María Santos about her work combining the two topics, revealing more similarities than one would expect.

Santos is a double-graduate of Tech, with both an M.S. and a Ph.D. in ECE.

She is now a postdoctoral research associate in the department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University.

Her research focuses on the distributed coordination of multi-robot systems and is particularly concerned with the capabilities of large swarms of robots.

She explores the potential of these swarms in artistic expression, especially that of theater and music.

Explaining more about her work, Santos said that during her time at Tech, her team studied the creative ability of swarms to evoke emotions in an audience.

“Think about using a multi-robot system for a theatrical exposition,” Santos said. “How can you evoke happiness or sadness?”

The goal in Santos’s research is to convert these global sensations into individual commands that can instruct groups of these robots, even when the robots have different capabilities.

Her team also worked on a method for the robots to serve as an interactive tool between a human artist and a canvas for painting.

When asked what inspired her interest in this research, Santos said that while studying in Spain, she enjoyed the combination of her passion for music and love of engineering and more technical areas.

“I’ve always been fascinated by music,” Santos said. “I’ve been interested by these two very different thought processes, engineering, which is very structured, and music, which is structured as well but is thought about in a different way [than engineering]. I wanted to merge these but didn’t think it was possible. I was frustrated by the norms I saw in engineering.”

From this frustration, Santos decided that her goal was to merge the engineering into the arts by offering artists “intuitive” ways to create robotically-supported artwork.

Santos explained that for her, intuitiveness in the arts means being able to produce certain behaviors in the robots with very simple rules.

“In this emotive movement to create different emotions, we thought about how we could use standard behaviors to create sadness,” Santos said. “In painting, we focused on the robots as an active brush — red over here, blue over there.”

Santos began her work in earnest after taking a linear systems class taught by ECE professor Magnus Egerstedt.

“He got excited when I told him I studied music theory in Spain,” Santos said. “We started work on controlling robots through chords and harmony rules. This is quite challenging.”

“We developed a research agenda where we mixed the mathematical side of multi-robot system coordination with the artistic side, using tools for artistic expression.”

When Shackelford asked about challenges she faced during this project, she answered these mostly stemmed from the complexity of the artistic condition.

She also pointed out the high expectations that people have of robots and of what they can accomplish.

Santos explained her efforts to turn simple instructions for the robots into abstract methods of interaction.

“Sometimes, when you say you want to increase the efficiency in robots by a certain percentage, you have a more determined, narrow objective,” Santos said. “But when you do something artistic, and the possibilities are endless, there are difficulties you must face.”

Shackelford raised the issue of robot autonomy and whether robots would ever become their own artists.

Santos answered that she thinks of robots as tools to enhance the creative process.

“We have pre-programmed rules that are somewhat deterministic, but also somewhat random. The genius is probably where to break those rules,” Santos said. “… Art is boring if it’s predictable. Art is so related to the artist and I’m not sure how you’d do that with robots.”

As a final piece of advice for Tech students interested in similar areas of research, Santos emphasized the importance of working on something actually interesting to them.

“I was so happy to get to the lab every day and work with people I really enjoyed,” Santos said. “Don’t care about what everyone else is excited about.”

She then emphasized the value of communicating and learning from others in fields you are interested in exploring more of.

“This one took me a long time to internalize, but talk to people,” Santos said. “Don’t be scared of leaving your lab — you’ll gain new ideas. If you’re just in your lab 24/7, you won’t get that.”

Her work has the potential to make the work of artists not only more efficient but more integrative of the humanities and sciences, two fields that are frequently pitted against one another.

Moving forward Santos and her team would like feedback on what robotic abilities artists are interested in.

The event took place over Facebook Live. Follow @artsattech to learn about similar livestreams and events featuring artists, creators and alumni from the Tech community.

Is change ever an easy thing? Sometimes it can be exciting, but standing before a cliffside of unknowns tends to be intimidating.

Decisions and choices, the path forward, all of it makes me feel like I’m Indiana Jones in the Last Crusade movie where he has to have faith that there is a path before him as he endeavors to walk across a great divide.

I don’t really know if I’m as brave as Indiana Jones, or maybe it’s not a lack of bravery, but a lack of faith that were I to step off of solid ground, that my feet would not fall through empty air.

As I go into my last semester at Tech, everything feels like some great big decision I must make and it’s all too easy to stand in one place like a deer in headlights rather than possibly make a decision.

I’m worried about making the best decision, the right decision, the decision that will make me happy.

That too, makes things more confusing, wanting to be happy. I want to be happy wherever this next chapter finds me but I’m not sure what will make me happy. Do you know what will make you happy? I’m still trying to figure that out.

What I do know is that I wouldn’t be where I am without the people in my life, without the friends and family who picked me up when I messed up, when I put too much pressure on myself, when I tried to do too much.

I wouldn’t be where I am without the advice and kindness of the people who love me, who are willing to sit with me in my indecision, worry and anxiety.

I think these looming life choices are intimidating because so much of our lives we have been told that this is what we live for: to get a good job, to have security, to have certainty.

Except, those things aren’t absolute. What is a stable job worth if the company isn’t focused on equity and inclusion? What is certainty worth if it takes the joy of adventure with it?

All of these changes and decisions that I find myself facing now and for the next year, they don’t have to be so overwhelming. These things should be exciting, not terrifying.

I think I’ve given this time of decision a bit too much power over me and the rest of my life but the worst thing that can come from it all is that I am still loved.

Still worthy of being known. Still free to find joy and happiness, free to take longer than the person next to me, to make less money than someone else, to do whatever it is I will do because it’s my life.

The worst that could happen is that I move at my own pace, that I forge my own path, that I live my own life.

That’s not too bad if you ask me, I want to live my life, not the person next to me.

There are no comparisons to be made here because you are you and I am me and that is a beautiful and exciting thing.

So, as you face the road ahead, wherever you go, whatever you choose, it will be beautiful because it will be you.

Every few months there seems to be a new post on the Tech subreddit asking about the safety around campus.

Many students jump in to comment with the traditional safety tip answers that seem like common sense to anyone that’s been on a college campus.

“Try to walk in groups at night.” “Ladies, carry pepper spray with you.”

“Don’t leave the Tech Bubble and you’ll be good.”

While all of these tips are great and should be noted by any student, I find our reliance and insistence on the “Tech Bubble” to be strange, to say the least.

To me, the bubble that hypothetically surrounds Tech seems to be coded language for the invisible and harmful line we have drawn between ourselves and the Atlanta community.

It’s no secret that nearly everyone that’s been admitted to Tech was involved in community service in high school.

Whether it was through your required National Honor Society hours, or any other number of organizational commitments, we had to prove ourselves as community leaders in order to get into this school.

For some, if not most, the commitment to community service stopped there.

I know for me personally, once the realities of the Tech course load hit me, my opportunities to dedicate myself fully to community based projects seemed few and far between.

I participated in a handful of projects here and there, including a trip down to Florida with a campus ministry to do hurricane relief work, but other than that I was no longer putting in the hours into my community like I used to do in high school.

I had grown content in my Tech bubble.

There was no reason to leave the library to engage with the community around me when there was reading to be done and papers to be written.

In exploring what it meant to pursue Tech’s motto of “Progress and Service” I found myself straying further and further away from the service part as the stress of school got to me.

Last weekend, I had the pleasure of holding a conversation with Frank Brown, the current CEO of Communities In Schools of Atlanta.

CIS Atlanta is a non-profit organization that focuses its mission around supporting students and providing them with the resources they need in order to achieve in school.

During our talk, Mr. Brown brought up some points that really inspired me to reflect on the ways Tech students interact with the Atlanta community.

He discussed the fact that Tech is just down the street from some of the schools that CIS serves, and how disconnected our school is from the community.

He brought up the point that it does not really make sense for Tech to recruit all of these students who are math gods and science geniuses when the K-12 kids around us have some of the lowest proficiency in STEM subjects, with that divide becoming even worse with the switch to virtual learning throughout the pandemic.

I walked away from that conversation feeling like I had failed my former self.

As someone who spent many of their free afternoons at the Boys and Girls Club back home, I wondered why helping the community around my new home of Atlanta seemed far-fetched.

I then realized that a lot of my feelings went back to the concept of the Tech bubble and our propensity to not stray too far from it.

When it comes to service at Tech, I feel as though a lot of student leaders share the same goals of making this campus a better place for all students.

I heavily commend my peers for these goals and the progress they have made towards them.

Still, I cannot help but to think about the different parts of the community that our efforts don’t always reach because we’re mentally confined to our campus bubble.

Tech often encourages us to think globally when it comes to things like mottos, missions and strategic plans.

However, I would like to encourage you to think locally and realize that you can make a tremendous impact on the community around you with the resources and knowledge you possess.

I encourage you to reach out to people and organizations around you and figure out how you can serve not only the Tech community, but how you can pop that bubble in order to serve the greater Atlanta community as well.

The storming of the United States Capitol was an act of domestic terrorism. Period. The so-called “Patriots” were anything, but that. They made a farce of the country and painted one of the most sacred places in the country to look like a Target on Black Friday.

Ever since this infamous event, both the media and everyday social media users have drawn a parallel between it and this past summer’s Black Lives Matter protests. To attempt to equate or merely compare the two events is an extreme injustice to the BLM movement.

This act of insurgence is only homologous to other evil events in history that occurred as a result of white supremacy and privilege. Even when comparing the two events as a means to highlight the double standard in police response, it still does more damage than good.

First of all, the purpose of both events are on totally opposite sides of the ethical spectrum. The people that stormed the capitol were throwing a hissy fit because their orange demagogue lost an election fair and square.

I mean seriously, how many times do they need to lose for the recount results to stick? Sure, when Trump won some liberals wore black to show they were in mourning, but what they didn’t do is deface a historic building.

The most fundamental difference between BLM protesters and those that stormed the capital is that the latter was not a form of protest, but rather a symptom of this country’s white supremacist bedrock coming to the surface.

The insurrectionist’s goal was never to get Trump back on the throne for another four years, but to assert their dominance and parade their entitlement for the world to see.

How can you compare these individuals to the Black Lives Matter protesters who just wanted the police to stop killing and brutalizing Black people?

You cannot. They protested as an act of survival. Yet, they were the “thugs” and “criminals?” The BLM movement took place to enact a positive change that is within the realm of reality. To all those people that are equating the destruction of a Walmart to a historic building that is over 200 years old, maybe start using those same comparison skills when it’s not a white boy getting killed, but a Black boy instead. All lives still matter though, right? Do all buildings matter? If a smashed flat screen means more to you than a Black life then don’t you ever say “all lives matter” again.

The day January 6, 2020, will forever go down as a day of shame and pure embarrassment for the country. If my future self went back in time and told me that thousands of people would manage to storm the country’s capitol building, gain access to the capitol’s floor where legislators were meeting minutes before, break into Nancy Pelosi’s office leaving her a note saying “we will not back down”, and still manage to get selfies with law enforcement, I bet I could tell you exactly what that group of people looked like.

As a Black person, there is no world I can imagine where I would survive even attempting to do any one of those things. This event may have been a wake-up call for some people, but it came as no surprise to many.

This was a boiling point that has been in the making since the founding fathers put pen to paper. Trump did not invent white supremacy. It has always been lurking. However, he did reinvigorate it.

On Monday, Jan. 18, as a part of the Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service event, co-founder of Portrait Coffee John Onwuchekwa spoke about his company’s impact on the community and advice for students.

Portrait is located in southwest Atlanta, nestled in the historically Black neighborhood of West End.

The company’s namesake reflects the full story that goes into every cup of coffee.

“Underneath the iceberg of the coffee shop, middle schoolers in the West End can see the exporting, the production of coffee.

They can see the beauty of what can come out of a community like this when opportunity is created,” said Onwuchekwa.

Onwuchekwa’s journey to being a coffee-lover was a long one.

“I used to live my life by these arbitrary rules, one being ‘I don’t drink hot liquids,’” said Onwuchekwa.

Upon trying coffee during a desperate moment, he decided that it wasn’t bad and learned everything he could about the coffee-making process.

While travelling to different coffee shops across the United States, Onwuchekwa felt that other customers seldom looked like him.

“There were all these guys with beards and flannels, and it felt like this wasn’t a place for me,” said Onwuchekwa. “As a Black man in America, it felt like so many other interests of mine — unrepresentative.”

Looking into the history of coffee, Onwuchekwa learned of its origins in Ethiopia and decided he wanted to spend part of his life ‘pouring’ a different narrative.

“We want to change the image in people’s minds when they think of specialty coffee,” said Onwuchekwa. “People look at the West End, at my neighbors, and form an opinion on them based on what the news reports.

The narrative that starts to perpetuate in our minds is that our neighbors are just the products of a hundred personal decisions they make.

This is not the case at all. We want to tell stories that increase compassion and decrease irrational fear about communities different from our own.”

Part of Portrait’s mission is to bring to light the inherent inequality built into the city of Atlanta.

“Geography is never an accident,” said Onwuchekwa.

“I used to get on MARTA at the airport station and ride north. At the airport, the train was predominantly Black, but as you got to North Springs, the inside of the train changed, as did the outside.

The economic conditions of the West End train and the Sandy Springs train were different. The result is that Black people living in the West End neighborhood have to get off the train before they can take advantage of the economic opportunities in other places.”

Onwuchekwa described the similarity between the spatial layout of Atlanta in relation to race and that of the process of coffee.

“The same thing happens with black and brown folks on the equator who harvest the coffee but can’t take advantage of the opportunities in other places.”

Onwuchekwa described the similarity between the spatial layout of Atlanta in relation to race and that of the process of making coffee.

“The same thing happens with black and brown folks on the equator who harvest the coffee but can’t take advantage of the opportunities the coffee brings,” said Onwuchekwa.

Onwuchekwa related in detail his advice on making visible change.

“Nobody changes the world by trying to change the world in one fell swoop. It’s the small, consistent things that matter,” said Onwuchekwa.

Onwuchekwa was asked how students could better prioritize positive, long-term change.

To answer, he began by speaking of the inverse relationship between the speed of change and the longevity of impact.

“Rome wasn’t built in a day. The only thing you can do with Rome in a day is burn it,” said Onwuchekwa. “We prioritize not changing the world but becoming the type of person who wants to change the world.”

He also emphasized the importance of keeping your change centered and local.

The smaller one can keep their center, the more potent their impact, according to him.

For students wanting to explore the impact they can make on Atlanta, Onwuchekwa recommends several different ways to get connected.

“Insert yourself into a community where you don’t even understand its problems. Explore. Ask how you can serve them. Come in and listen, and let someone else shape the agenda. Even though we come from worlds apart, we realize we’re more similar than we thought,” said Onwuchekwa.

The shop opened at the very beginning of the COVID pandemic.

Onwuchekwa says that actually helped with their expansion.

“[We realized] that if people weren’t commuting to work, we could find a way to bring [the coffee] right to their doorsteps,” said Onwuchekwa.

Onwuchekwa explains that Portrait Coffee has served as an introduction to specialty coffee for some customers.

Looking forward, Portrait aims to open the shop’s cafe and to put out more story-telling content this spring.

As for their best coffee, Onwuchekwa recommends “Toni”, named after celebrated author Toni Morrison, for those who enjoy a nutty and savory flavor.

On the fruitier side, he recommends the Ethiopian Guji.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of FASET, a tradition which welcomes new students to Tech and provides current students an opportunity for
mentorship.

Staff applications for the both the FASET and Wreck Camp programs are open until Feb. 5 at midnight.

Fourth-year BA Sarah Beth Parker, who is the membership and recruitment executive board member for the FASET Cabinet, explains the benefits of joining the staff.

“The professional experience that you gain from FASET, it’s really unmatched,” Parker said.

She mentions the importance of being a representative for an organization.

“You have to, one, learn how to put on the FASET face, as we call it, so even when you’re tired, even when you’re stressed, even when there’s a lot going on, being able to put on the smile and represent an organization really well,” Parker said.

Additionally, being a representative for Tech means drawing upon personal experiences.

“Everyone has had their own experiences with different things at Tech, but when a student asks you about a specific resource, [you are] learning how to represent the Institute in a way, while also being able to give your honest experience with it and learning how to mesh those two. I think [it] is a super valuable skill for joining the workforce,” Parker said.

Parker’s decision to become a FASET Leader was inspired by her own time at FASET.

“I think that was like the peak of my existence when I came into my own FASET,” Parker said.

“That’s the most extroverted I’ve ever been, I was more ready to make friends than at any other time in my life and my FASET leader was so kind and let me kind of bounce off the walls … I was like, ‘This is just a place where I feel like I belong and I want to be her one day.’”

After her first year at Tech, Parker applied to join the FASET staff and began the training.

“I learned a lot about Tech and I slowly got to know people and our retreat is where I feel like I really started to develop some relationships,” Parker said.

Parker soon had an opportunity to pass along her own advice later that summer.

“FASET is different from anything I’ve ever experienced,” Parker said.

“I led my first small group at the summer first-year FASET, so iGniTe, and everyone was so excited, so willing to make friends. I think honestly that was the best small group I had that entire summer, just because of the energy that they had.”

Parker gave out her phone number and email to her small group so that any students could contact her for help.

One student reached out and she was able to serve as a mentor for them throughout the summer.

“That mentorship experience really meant a lot to me, because it really felt like a tangible way that I was making an impact on someone else, as opposed to just like giving my small group spiel and then everyone leaving,” said Parker.

“So that was really cool and rewarding.”

While there are some differences between working at either program has benefits.

One factor to consider is time commitment and availability.

Working at FASET means staff cannot work full time, because the FASET sessions take place on workdays.

“Wreck Camp is less of a consistent commitment over the summer, because they have three camps, so you just have to be able to be there for the workdays and for the specific camps,” said Parker.

“So, for example, maybe if someone is working a flexible full time job, they could work full time and space with their students, just because the camps last several days and you’re with the same small group the whole time, so you really get to dive in deep with those relationships,” said Parker. “… FASET leaders will spend time with a wider variety of students, because the students change every session and there’s a lot more sessions and FASET leaders will also need to interact with parents and guests a lot more.”

The applications for both programs are broken down into parts to help the recruitment team learn more about the applicants.

“You’ll have to put in general information like name, major, hometown, all that good stuff. You’ll have to talk about your availability for the spring and the summer, like if you’re co-oping or interning, important dates,” said Parker. “Then there are going to be some short essay questions just to help us get to know a little bit more about the candidates.”

Applications will also need to provide which dates they can attend events.

“FASET has an extra step where we’re asking people to submit an ‘About Me’ image as a way for us to kind of see different parts of the applicants that may not be addressed in the application questions, so this is more an opportunity to let their personality shine and you can put pictures of yourselves, you can put your favorite memes, your favorite quotes,” said Parker.

The staff training will be largely virtual with the potential for some hybrid interactions, but both can be completed entirely virtually.

“We’re of course going to be abiding by all government, CDC, USG and GT-COVID requirements,” said Parker. “… Over the summer, for FASET, we’re likely going to have some socially distanced in-person sessions and some online sessions … Just in case, there’s some emergency where we can’t do socially distanced in-person, we do have the capacity for virtual.”

For either in-person or virtual programs, Parker encourages students who genuinely want to help new students to apply.

“I think the most important part in both of our programs is a passion to serve students,” said Parker. “I think, personally, you can be the most enthusiastic, well-versed Tech person in the world, but if you’re not applying for the right reasons, it’s kind of easy to see through that, so just making sure that you really showcase your passion for wanting to help new students at Tech.”

Students interested in applying for FASET can visit tinyurl.com/FASET21.

Students interested in applying for Wreck Camp can visit tinyurl.com/WCHY2021.

Students with any questions about applying for FASET stadd may contact Tim Edmonds-King at tking62@gatech.edu, Sarah Beth Parker at sarah_parker@gatech.edu or Logan Sands at lsands3@gatech.edu.

Additionally, students with any questions about applying for Wreck Camp staff may contact Jake Owens at Jake.m.owens@gatech.edu.

Tech welcomed undefeated Notre Dame to Bobby Dodd Stadium this past weekend. Coming into the game, the fourth-ranked Fighting Irish were pegged as 20 point road favorites. Saturday’s game was a throwback of sorts for Tech, as the team brought the iconic “Black Watch” uniforms from the 1980s. This moniker was specifically applied to the defense that was one of the best in the country in 1984-85. The black and gold uniforms were a tribute to these teams, who wore similar uniforms in their heyday

The game kicked off at 3:30 p.m. with perfect weather in Atlanta. Tech won the toss and chose to defer until the second half, giving Brian Kelly’s squad the first possession of the game. Notre Dame’s first drive was emblematic of their attack strategy for the entire game; they methodically moved the ball downfield with a combination of runs and short passes, finishing off a drive of over eight minutes with an eight-yard touchdown pass from quarterback Ian Book to wide receiver Joe Wilkins. Tech punted after a six-play drive, and the Irish immediately began to move down the field again, advancing all the way to the Jackets’ seven yard line early in the second quarter.

However, just when it seemed the game could get out of hand, junior safety Juanyeh Thomas came up with a huge play, forcing a fumble by Notre Dame running back Kyren Williams. The ball bounced right into the hands of sophomore Zamari Walton, who found nothing but green grass between himself and the end zone. This 93-yard touchdown was the longest fumble return in the history of Tech football, and it evened the score at seven.

This play electrified the Tech sideline, as well as the limited capacity crowd of 11,000 that attended the game. However, it also gave the ball right back to the Irish who responded quickly, retaking the lead in under four minutes on a two-yard touchdown run by Williams.

After the two teams traded punts, a failed fourth-down conversion attempt by the Jackets gave the Irish excellent field position on Tech’s side of the field, and they would capitalize with a field goal near the end of the half to give them a 17-7 lead heading into the locker room.

Tech had the ball to start the second half and picked up 15 yards on an unnecessary roughness penalty, and then the offense had their first highlight play of the afternoon, as quarterback Jeff Sims fired a 39-yard dart down the middle of the field to wideout Jalen Camp, putting the Jackets squarely in Notre Dame territory.

However, the momentum was killed on the very next play, as Sims was sacked and stripped, giving the ball right back to the Fighting Irish. This led to another rushing touchdown for Williams, this time from four yards out, and Notre Dame took a commanding 24-7 lead.

A couple drives later, Sims and company managed to move the ball all the way to Notre Dame’s 14-yard line late in the third quarter, but a pair of sacks forced the team to settle for a field goal, and freshman Jude Kelley’s 44-yard attempt was no good. Notre Dame would add another rushing touchdown early in the fourth quarter on a three-yard run by C’Bo Flemister.

Although the game was essentially out of reach at this point, the Jackets continued to battle. Sims found running back Jahymr Gibbs out of the backfield for a 34-yard gain. The freshman quarterback scrambled for 13 yards, and junior Jordan Mason took a handoff 14 yards to the Notre Dame three yard line. Two plays later, Mason found the end zone from one yard out. The ensuing two-point conversion attempt was no good, but the threat of a shutout was ended.

Tech managed to successfully pull off an onside kick on the next series, but the ensuing drive stalled at Notre Dame’s 46-yard line. The Irish were on the verge of scoring again as the clock wound down, but the Jackets fought to the very end, stuffing Notre Dame at the goal line on the last play of the game. The final result was a 31-13 victory for the visitors.

This season continues to be a learning process for head coach Geoff Collins in his second year at the helm. Sims had three fumbles in the second half (though he only lost one) and limiting mistakes continues to be the main issue for him, but he has shown flashes of his potential as a dual threat quarterback, and the experience he is gaining now will prove invaluable in the future. He has also continued to build chemistry in the passing game with Gibbs, whose five catches led the team on Saturday.

Defensively, Notre Dame dominated time of possession and benefitted from a short field multiple times, but the Jackets showed heart in competing much more effectively than they did against Clemson two weeks ago, or even against Boston College last week. Though clearly overmatched against a powerhouse like Notre Dame, the competitiveness of the team is encouraging to see and will hopefully serve them well in more winnable matchups in the future.