Michelle Alexander, author of “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,” spoke to Drexel students May 6 in the Main Auditorium. The event was co-sponsored by The Good Idea Fund, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Africana Studies program.

“We use our criminal justice system to label people of color and use all the same discriminatory practices that we supposedly left behind … employment discrimination, housing discrimination, the right to vote — suddenly legal. As a criminal, you have just as few rights and arguably less respect than a black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow,” Alexander quoted from her book.

Alexander worked as a civil rights lawyer after graduating from Stanford Law School. She was the director of the Civil Rights Clinic on the Stanford Law School faculty. She served several years as director of the Racial Justice Project of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California. She joined The Ohio State University faculty in 2005, the same year she received a Soros Justice Fellowship. The fellowship allowed her to work on her book, “The New Jim Crow.”

The Good Idea Fund asked Alexander to speak and introduced her before she began. The event was coordinated by Jacqueline Rios, the communication and events coordinator of the Center for Interdisciplinary Programs. Julie Mostov, the vice provost of global initiatives and a professor of political science, spoke before Alexander came onstage.

Alexander began by describing a picture she had once seen depicting a Latina woman at a demonstration. The woman was holding a sign that said, “F— weed, legalize my mother.”

“I felt my eyes prick with tears. Something in her eyes and her expression conveyed her pains, her fears and outrage. … I can almost hear her say, ‘This country will legalize weed, will legalize pot, but my own mother? The woman who risked her life, coming in hopes in giving me a better [life], who’s now treated like a common criminal, faced with prison or deportation and living in shadows and a state of fear,’” Alexander said.

“We live in confusing times today, … but it looks good from a distance. We turn on the television, and there’s President Barack Obama, standing in the Rose Garden, looking handsome and dignified and in charge — the nation’s first black president. … But then you drive a few blocks from the White House, and you find the other America. You find neighborhoods where three out of four young black men already spent time behind bars or under correction control. And the rest? It’s just a matter of time,” she said.

These neighborhoods were described by Alexander as a “brand-new undercaste” and “invisible.” She talked about how no figure in the media, including politicians or newscasters, would talk about the suffering felt in those areas. “Martin Luther King Jr. would turn in his grave today,” she said.

Alexander talked about what led her to make this realization. She talked about a young man she met when she was director of the Racial Justice Project for the ACLUNC. She was working on a lawsuit against police in northern California called the DWB Project. She worked to advertise a number that people could call if they felt that the police racially discriminated against them.

“Within the first three minutes, we received thousands of calls,” Alexander said.

She described a young man who came in with a stack of papers of all the notes documenting discrimination against him. At first, Alexander felt that she had found a star witness for her case, but she then found out that he was a felon. When Alexander told him that she couldn’t use him for the case because of his record, the young man tried to explain that it was a set-up and then ripped up his notes and left in frustration, accusing her of not actually trying to help.

She later found out that the drug task force of the Oakland Police had been setting up young black men by planting drugs on them and taking them in, just as the man had tried explaining to her earlier, including a police officer he identified.

“I realized he’s right about me. I’m no better than the police. The minute he told me he was a felon, I just stopped listening. I couldn’t even hear what he had to say,” Alexander said.

After conducting some research, she found that it was the fact that the man was innocent that put her in the wrong; she was tackling the issues of racial injustice without also representing those who were found guilty. She discussed the idea that men with criminal records were not counted in census data about unemployment and other problems. She also discussed the beginning of the war on drugs that began with President Reagan, when drug crime was in decline. She said that the amount of incarceration quintupled after that time period and that it actually had to do with racial politics.

“The total number of incarcerations for drug offenses was more than the total number of all other offenses in 1980, … almost exclusively aimed at poor neighborhoods of color,” Alexander said.

She discussed the political moves of the Reagan administration to uncover the crack problems that spread through poor neighborhoods. She said that it was to motivate politicians to make drug laws tougher and created a competition between the political parties to make them stronger, citing the Clinton administration’s law that denied drug offenders access to food stamps.

“You don’t have to be convicted of drug offenses. You only need to be suspected. They can take the money out of your pocket. They can take your car away from you. That’s giving the police direct monetary influence … in the longevity in this war on drugs,” Alexander continued.

She then discussed how the Supreme Court had closed its doors to taking out the racial bias because it required direct evidence that indicated intention, despite all the evidence that was acquired.

After a question-and-answer section, Alexander retired to a book signing and reception. In an interview, she talked about what her plans would be on the future of the message she created.

“I’m now interested in supporting people who are engaging in activism and organizing in their community. I’m praying that people will continue to do community organizing and advocacy in ending the drug war and abolishing all these forms of racial discrimination on these people who just got out of prison. … It’s possible. It just requires people in all of these communities saying, ‘We no longer want to send people to jail for minor drug offenses. We want to have rehabilitation. We want a public-health approach, not a cruel justice approach,’” Alexander said.

Her book, published in 2010, was a New York Times best-seller and was called a “social gospel” based on its coverage of the targeting of African-American men since the beginning of the war on drugs. It also received the 2011 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Image Award for best nonfiction.

The post The Good Idea Fund hosts ‘New Jim Crow’ author appeared first on The Triangle.

Drexel University acquired property on the corner of 31st and Market streets, where the auto-repair shop Firestone currently resides, a University press release announced April 26. The University paid $8.95 million for this 26,675-square-foot piece of land from Bridgestone Retail Operations LLC. Although the property now belongs to Drexel, the Firestone located on it is leased for three more years with the option to leave at any moment. As part of the deal, Drexel is assisting Firestone in relocating.

“When I was brought here by President Papadakis, we developed a master plan that shows the University in 30 years in five-year increments. One of those increments included the purchasing of Firestone. Drexel has been trying to buy Firestone for the last 20 to 30 years,” James Tucker, senior vice president for Student Life and Administrative Services, said.

Drexel contacted the owners of the local Firestone to see if they were interested in selling the property. When they said they were not interested, University officials contacted the national Firestone headquarters in Chicago. Firestone representatives consider the current Firestone at Drexel to be the highest-grossing Firestone on the East Coast. When the headquarters also failed to show interest, a Drexel real-estate agent contacted Bridgestone, the larger company that owns Firestone, and was able to convince them to have the Firestone negotiate with Drexel for the purchase. The original asking price for the property was $12 million.

“It’s in the middle of our campus; if you think about a doughnut hole, it’s a hole in the middle that really stops our university from being a whole university. The City of Philadelphia has agreed considering to sell the little spur of a street and the triangle in front of the Firestone after we purchased it,” Tucker said. This location is planned to be the center for the student union, co-op offices and a new location for the Pennoni Honors College. Tucker said the plans to start the change will most likely come within the next three to five years.

Drexel is also in the process of planning the purchases of many other properties around the area as part of the 30-year master plan. University Crossings is going to give land rights to Drexel for free in September 2013. Drexel is also designing new residence and dining facilities at 34th Street and Lancaster Avenue in place of the existing Frederic O. Hess Laboratories.

Drexel is also beginning a project called the Innovation Neighborhood, which is the revitalizing of the area from 30th Street Station to 32nd Street, the railroad yard, JFK Boulevard and Chestnut Street. Drexel owns 10 buildable parking lots which it will offer up to its partners in order to invest in new land developments that provide retail spaces and academic departments, including biomedical engineering, engineering, health sciences, entrepreneurship and research centers. The partners are expected to be looking to work with Drexel faculty, graduate students and undergraduate students, offering possible co-op options.

“We currently are more than 25,000 students including full time, part time, graduate and undergraduate, to go up to 34,000 within the next 10 years. Part of that growth has to have buildings to go along with it, including providing social space, academic space, research space and athletic space,” Tucker said.

These projects, along with many others and the relocation of different offices on campus, will be set into effect within the next five years.

The post Firestone purchased for master plan appeared first on The Triangle.

U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano visited Drexel University’s Paul Peck Alumni Center April 2 to announce with President John A. Fry the seven colleges and universities that will participate in the Department of Homeland Security’s Campus Resilience Pilot Program.

Announced Feb. 1, the CR Pilot is a program intended to strengthen campus resilience during emergency situations. The initiative is led by the Department of Homeland Security, which is working with the Department of Education and the Department of Justice after recommendation from the Homeland Security Academic Advisory Council. The program is also supported by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, the Student and Exchange Visitor Program and the DHS Office of Academic Engagement.

“[Napolitano] will be making an exciting announcement about Drexel’s expanding relationship with Homeland Security,” Fry said before Napolitano came up to speak. Earlier that day, Napolitano led a roundtable discussion organized by the Student Affairs Council with students and faculty members, discussing the safety issues that face colleges today.

“It was really interesting. The students had an opportunity to ask questions on a host of different subjects, and the secretary was very forthright with them and it was a good exchange,” Domenic Ceccanecchio, vice president of Drexel Public Safety, said.

“It’s designed to help communities of all sizes — public and private — prepare for, respond to, and recover from crises or emergencies,” Napolitano said as she began her talk. The program also extends to protect international students and aids in times of crisis. Application submissions from schools were accepted throughout the month of February, and the selection process was completed in March. She explained that all campuses should be trained to anticipate all of the “what ifs.”

“As we know from experience, a crisis can happen on campus without notice, whether it’s a shooter situation, a disaster like a hurricane or earthquake, or some other disaster that endangers lives,” Napolitano said. “This pilot is part of our ‘whole community’ approach.” Napolitano described the whole-community approach as a way to engage every person on campus, including school officials, students, community leaders and the public.

“This pilot will draw on existing resources to identify and build upon the good work that schools like Drexel have already done and are doing with respect to security,” Napolitano said. Funding will be redirected from the existing resources provided to each of the schools. Homeland Security has yet to request additional funding for the program.

In November 2012, Drexel was ranked by Security magazine as the third-safest campus in the country. Drexel was in the top 10 for the third year in the row. Napolitano went on to credit Drexel as a “true leader when it comes to campus security.” She highlighted the public awareness programs, training against active shooters, defense tactics on crime scenes and the “first-rate” Public Safety communications center.

“We have a master plan for the University and a master communication plan. Then we have different elements that make up our plan. We have vital building information like blueprints and plans that we share with the police and fire departments so they’re familiar with them. And then we have playbooks that we create with each of the department resources and information systems on how they respond to emergencies, too,” Ceccanecchio said.

“We can provide technical assistance, envelop your current resilience plan, taking the best practices here and spreading them across the country,” Napolitano said, explaining how the CR Pilot would improve campus safety everywhere.

Napolitano also described the CR Pilot’s goal to decrease gun violence. “Some concrete examples of what may occur under the pilot, … [such as] developing comprehensive emergency management plans at schools of all kinds conducting site security assessments — we’ve already done a hundred universities since the tragedy at Newtown with more on the way — training of hundreds as campus law enforcement officers and emergency management plus other officials and partners on active-shooter awareness, mitigation and response, providing the way of online resources on campus including active-shooter training through our website, and finding a way on a campus setting to promote the ‘See Something, Say Something’ campaign,” she said.

Drexel University is among seven schools chosen to participate in the programs. The other universities, as announced by Napolitano, were Eastern Connecticut State University, Green River Community College, Navajo Technical College, Texas A&M University, Tougaloo College and the University of San Francisco. The different colleges represent various types of college settings across the country including urban, rural, public and private. Napolitano said she hopes the diverse backgrounds of the schools will provide a large amount of insight on campus safety.

Ceccanecchio also said that Drexel has two major exercises scheduled in June that will later lead to smaller exercises. One will be an active-shooter exercise at the Hagerty Library including local law enforcement and emergency responders. Drexel plans to make similar drills more complicated in the future to help the community prepare for the worst.

“It’s an ongoing process. We always want to get better approval. They bring a lot of resources to the table like their expertise. We’ve revised our emergency plan, and we want to make sure it’s compliant to the best practices. We want to then be able to expand to other schools across the country,” Ceccanecchio said.

Researchers at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University recently discovered a new species of fish fossils, Holoptychius bergmanni, that could reveal more about the evolution of some aquatic organisms that are now land organisms.

Led by Ted Daeschler, associate curator of the Academy’s Department of Vertebrate Biology, and Neil Shubin, a researcher and professor at the University of Chicago’s Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy, the team worked together to analyze new findings both locally in Pennsylvania and in Arctic Canada.

“[The fossils are] helping us paint a better picture about the diversity of life,” Daeschler said.

Their research strongly focuses on a set of organisms rooted in the Devonian period, a time set around 100 million to 365 million years before our time. “It’s important to highlight the late Devonian as a time of real transition in not only the history of vertebrates but also the history of arthropods and plants. The Devonian period is a time when terrestrialization is happening in a big way across a number of different groups. It’s the dawn of the modern terrestrial ecosystem,” Jason Downs, a research associate from Swarthmore College who worked with Daeschler and Shubin as lead researcher in their most recent project, said.

In 1999, Daeschler partnered up with Shubin to go well above the Arctic Circle to look for Devonian rocks in an area called Nunavut.

“There are good Devonian rocks that were formed in kinds of environments that would have these kinds of fossil fish. The rocks are well exposed because we don’t have as much soil or plant growth as we do here in Pennsylvania, and the area hadn’t been explored yet before,” Daeschler continued. Since then, Daeschler has gone back to the area seven times. It is also where he found the most information for his most recent publication.

“The H. bergmanni material was collected at a locality on Ellesmere Island [in Nunavut, Canada] that I discovered back in 2000. The locality has been quite productive, supporting five field seasons since its original discovery,” Downs said. Downs was part of the small research team of four scientists that had worked in the area for the last decade. He was the lead researcher and author of the publication on H. bergmanni, the third new species to be found in that area.

“Oftentimes it’s very hard to find the whole skeleton. Most of the time we find the most durable parts of the skeleton. When the animals had died, most of the body was destroyed. The best parts to find are the jaw line and parts of the skull,” Daeschler said.

After the material is collected from the site, it is taken to a preparation lab where the rock is slowly chipped away from the bone to remove the embedded fossil. It exposes the details of the fossil to be studied later. The fossil is then compared to other fossils, related animals and other papers.

H. bergmanni was found in the same area as Tiktaalik roseae, a famous fish fossil found in 2006 by Daeschler, who described it as a “textbook example” of vertebrate transition to terrestrial ecosystems. Research into the fossil gave not only an anatomical analysis but also an ecological indication.

“It seemed to be doing some novel things with its fins and the nature of its skeleton, particularly in the neck. It was taking on some novel features that we don’t associate with a fish. It was starting to live more like an amphibian with appendages that helped it get around shallow water or a neck that moved from side to side,” Daeschler said.

The research team discovered that the fossil was not only a member of the group Holoptychius but was also a new species of that same group.

Furthermore, the researcher compared the H. bergmanni to other members of the genus that were found in different areas of the world. Daeschler described this as paleogeography.

“Some of the closest relatives of the specimens we found in Canada are known in Europe, in the Baltics, in Latvia, also in Scotland. It helps confirm that there was no Atlantic Ocean at the time. The landmasses were conformed much more differently,” he said.

Downs had been working with Daeschler and Shubin for almost 20 years; he began working as a high school intern. The research will continue to analyze H. bergmanni and compare it to other members of its genus. “It really redefines how we use the name Holoptychius,” Downs said.

The newly reopened Leonard Pearlstein Gallery held an exhibition of internationally renowned artist Wangechi Mutu and several of her engaging works Feb. 22 at its new location in the URBN Center Annex at 3401 Filbert St. The exhibition is set to show from Feb. 15 to March 30.

Magda Papaioannou – The Triangle:  The Leonard Pearlstein Gallery hosted a grand opening of renowned artist Wangechi Mutu’s exhibition Feb. 22. The gallery moved to its new location at the URBN Center Annex.

Mutu is an artist with an extremely colorful background. Born in Kenya and raised in Wales, she moved to New York and attended the New School for Social Research and Parsons School of Art Design to study anthropology. She moved on to receive her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from one of New York’s most prestigious schools, The Cooper Union, and then a Master of Fine Arts from Yale University. She received the Deutsche Bank award for “Artist of the Year” in 2010.

“It was a great way to kick off the gallery. It was a very diverse crowd, [including] members from the local community, the high-end art world and people from the University. It drew the kind of attention we were hoping for,” Joseph Gregory, the curator of the gallery, said.

The new Pearlstein Gallery is five times larger in square footage from the previous gallery located in Nesbitt Hall. It features Mutu’s spacious “Suspended Playtime” (2008), a large collection of black plastic bags fashioned into “surrogate soccer balls,” as Gregory said. It is hung around half a foot off the ground with twine from the Gladstone Gallery, and her other works were gallantly displayed for appreciators.

The “Suspended Playtime” piece gave the audience the urge to walk through it, causing the balls of trash-bags to swing and bump into each other. For instance, there were several people (mostly children) who tried to play a game by walking through it without touching the balls.

“Those are the products of African children who don’t have the resources to have toys, and it’s a tribute to their intelligence and will to have fun in the midst of war,” Gregory said.

When first walking into the Gallery, Mutu’s most representative piece of art from 2010, “Three Huggers,” greets passers-by with a striking 15-foot portrait of a woman hugging a tree made from ink, paint and collage on Mylar.

“That piece is most typical of her work. She certainly has a fractured biography from her different cultural backgrounds. Her native country, Kenya, recently made a nation-state, is suffering from the effects of post-colonialism. She was aware that these kinds of forces are crucial in one’s sense of identity,” Gregory said.

What makes the piece so wondrous is the gradient collage art that is on the woman. Starting from her feet, there is an array of collaged images of African jewelry and what looks to be the parts of animals. As you move up the body, you see the collage of African images strikingly less prominent, and it’s all pink.

“It shows Mutu’s feelings of a person’s identity being something that should be constantly put together. It shows the power of the African woman and how they have the power to present themselves,” Gregory said. The woman’s face is blotched with a trombone, shiny gold and silver images of parts of clothing, and other seductive parts of women. Her hair turns into a grotesque river, turning on her as a ferocious dog goes in to bite the woman. The piece greatly portrays Mutu’s strong motifs of how the feet lead to the “roots” of her culture, and as you go up the body, the Westernization is attacking that identity.

Mutu’s pieces generally revolve around the objectification of women in post-colonial culture, and they were extremely confrontational as to representing the female power.

Her pieces such as “Pin-Up” (2001), “The Ark Collection” (2006) and “Bedroom Masks” (2012) made strong statements about the objectification of women as sex objects. “The Ark Collection” from the Sender Collection and “Bedroom Masks” from Mutu herself are all postcard collages made from African pornographic magazines, jewelry and cultural images. “[In the ‘Ark Collection’] they’re like butterflies trapped in a case and categorized [in Western culture] which makes it a very important statement about women,” Gregory said.

Mutu’s video pieces, reserved in the side room to themselves, demonstrated her talent for working in media on multiple levels. Her most notable piece among it was “Shoe, Shoe” (2010) on digital beta cam from the Gladstone Gallery.

“It’s about anger. It’s about the greatest obscenity to cultural poverty. It shows the homeless on the streets, and it gives a feeling of empathy,” Gregory said. “Cutting” (2004), courtesy of Mutu and Susanne Vielmetter, was also the largest of the presented videos. “Wangechi shows herself on a crest of a hill with a machete. She cuts away at what seems to be a hollowed log. She doesn’t get very far with her labor. The machete in Africa has been a work tool, but it’s also been a weapon of genocide. ‘War and strife is forever,’” Gregory said.

The gallery was complemented by a dance performance choreographed by Tania Isaac, who represented female power with fierce dancers who pushed the audience back with their moves. The performance also featured outstanding poetry from an incredibly famous poet and professor, Sonia Sanchez. Mutu regarded her with high respect as a fellow “freedom fighter.”

Drexel has done a wonderful job highlighting an amazing artist, and it’s a definite recommendation for anyone. “We want to be associated to very serious art at the highest caliber, and Wangechi Mutu certainly fit the bill, and all the trouble and expense was well worth the while,” Gregory concluded.