NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY | RALEIGH, NC | THENUBIANMESSAGE.COM | Wednesday, september 7, 2016
wednesday, september 7, 2016 | 2
Letterfrom fromthe theEditor Editor Letter Hey family,
Recently our publication has focused on what NC State and the city of Raleigh have to offer you as students. However, in this edition we have chosen to focus on issues that affect our community both systemically and internally. As students who are privileged enough to receive a higher education it is our duty to analyze issues that plague our community and help resolve them; and we have been doing exactly that. In this edition you will read about the upcoming 9/11 memorial run. This run forces us to think outside of the walls of our community and remember that the world is so much bigger than NC State. You will have the opportunity to read about Harambee!!, an event that fosters a sense of community among NC State students and faculty. You’ll also read about Pack2Pack, an initiative to ensure that Pack Promise scholars receive the essentials to be successful students at NC State. While it is wonderful to think about all the amazing events and initiatives being hosted and facilitated within our community, it is also imperative that we discuss issues that happen outside of our community. Issues that we contribute to by not speaking up for others. Our cover story discusses an upcoming strike in North Carolina from prison-workers in local prisons. These prisoners work for low compensation and make products that we use on NC State’s campus everyday. With that being said, as passive recipients of what many consider modern day slave labor, it is time for us to demand better from our university and ourselves. I’m not saying you should refuse to sit at your desks, but I am saying we should listen to those whose voices we don’t hear often. In this article you will find direct quotes from inmates about the conditions they live in, their responsibilities as prison workers and their compensation for their work. Read these words carefully and marinate on how we contribute to this system. I implore you to stand in solidarity with those who have even in small ways impacted our education. Question the system. Demand that your friends, professors, student organizations and the university administration take a stance on the issue. Because as Gandhi once said “You have to do the right thing... You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result.” Be blessed, Stephanie
THISISSUE
3 Harambee!! 2016 A glance at NC State’s upcoming cultural celebration.
3 9/11 run
A look at NC State’s memorial event.
4 Upcoming Prison Strike An look at unjustified labor in the prison system.
6 Pack2Pack Initiative Helping pack members in need.
7 #StayWoke How overusing a hashtag can alter the message.
Editor-in-Chief Stepanie Tate
Managing Editor Anahzsa Jones
Only with the permission of our elders do we proudly produce each edition of the Nubian Message. Dr. Yosef ben-Yochannan: Dr. John Henrik Clark: Dr. Leonard Jeffries: The Black Panther Party: Mumia A. Jamal: Geronimo Pratt: Tony Williamson: Dr. Lawrence Clark: Dr. Augustus McIver Witherspoon: Dr. Wandra P. Hill: Mr. Kyran Anderson: Dr. Lathan Turner: Dr. M. Iyailu Moses: Dokta Toni Thorpe and all those who accompany us as we are STILL on the journey to true consciousness.
Layout Editor Ashley Darrisaw
Layout Editor Allona Wilkerson
Layout Editor Ian Clement Jr.
NEWS
wednesday, september 7, 2016 | 3
A Preview of the Annual event Harambee!! keilah davis Correspondent The African American Cultural Center will host its annual Harambee!! program Thursday, Sept. 8 at 5pm in Talley Ballroom. Harambee means “let us come together” in Swahili and the African American Cultural Center (AACC) aims to embody this mission with Harambee!! 2016. Ms. Toni Thorpe, affectionately known as “Mama Thorpe,” is the Program Coordinator for AACC and in charge of the event. “One of my favorite proverbs is ‘if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.’ That’s what Harambee is about. Coming together so we can go far,” said Mama Thorpe.
Originally, Harambee!! was a reception to welcome new African American students, faculty, and staff into the community. Since then, Harambee!! has transformed into a celebration with performances by students and alumni. “Harambee is the symbolic message that we have a responsibility as the harvesters to nourish new seeds and make sure they grow into fruition,” said Mama Thorpe. “We’re in a society that wants you to believe that we operate in independence. We want to change that mindset; we operate collectively.” This year’s performances will include a piece by high school students, music from Uninhibited Praise Gospel Choir, and spoken word by alumna Ms. Cynthia Sharpe.
“The performance piece [of Harambee] was conceptualized to bring meaning to the make-up and heartbeat of the African American community,” said Mama Thorpe. “We are not a monolithic people or community. We wanted to create a piece that gave voice to the many voices in the community and to highlight that a community isn’t defined by one’s ethnicity or skin color but by one’s human connectedness and passion.” In addition to performances, Harambee!! will feature information booths. To stress the importance of political engagement, Harambee!! will have voter registration tables for students to register or change their address. Other tables will have information about the AACC library and gallery.
The AACC is partnering with Feed the Pack, a community initiative to combat food insecurity in the NC State community. Students are asked to bring foods to donate to the Feed the Pack bin. AACC is also partnering with D.H. Hill Library Special Collections. This project collects stories from students about their engagement with AACC during their years at NC State. These interviews will become part of NC State’s permanent archive. The event is open to all students, faculty, and staff. For more information, please visit www.ncsu.edu/aacc.
the pack will never forget the events of 9/11 Penny Lawrence Correspondent On September 10th, a run to commemorate the victims of 9/11 will start in Stafford Commons. Unlike most runs NC State has done, this one will start on campus and remain on campus throughout the entire race. The race itself will start at 8:30 a.m. and go until 11:30 a.m. There will be free shirts given out on a first come first serve basis. Volunteers will also get shirts.
He gave his reason for specifically making the memorial run a run. “I envisioned some manner of physical exertion to honor the heroic acts of our service members on 9/11. These first responders climbed stair after stair through smoke and fire well aware that each step higher took them farther from safety.” He wanted to create a sense of unity.
the help and support of 20 different organizations, as well as the donations to the GoFundMe, the event was made possible. It was also Caporali’s vision to have the run take place on NC State’s campus. That in itself was difficult to accomplish. Caporali also wanted the run to be open to not only NC State students, but to the public as well.
This 9/11 memorial run was the dream of Christopher Caporali. Caporali is a senior studying meteorology in his last semester at NC State. He had noticed that as a campus, NC State did not do anything to remember the victims of 9/11. He decided that he wanted to change that and came up with the idea of a memorial run.
Caporali then contacted Paul Nolan, Student Body President, and Colin Beamer, Student Government Chief of Staff. Over the summer, the three of them managed to make Caporali’s dream a reality. Paul Nolan expressed admiration at Caporali’s ability to pull off such a big event. “It’s very difficult for a single student to do a large event like this. There are entire student organizations that struggle to put on like a big programming event like this,” said Nolan.
Nolan explained, “...the context is so much more than the NC State community. It’s larger. It’s Raleigh, and it’s North Carolina, and it’s even bigger than that.” There will be nearby parking for anyone that needs to drive to the beginning of the run.
After being particularly moved by the terrorist attacks on Brussels, Orlando and France, he discussed why he decided to do something. “In each event I would watch the news in the morning, the afternoon and the evening, receiving updates on the identities of the terrorists and the always-rising death tolls,” said Caporali.
Like any big event, this one required funds. A GoFundMe was created to afford the services of the Campus Police/EMS, as well as other expenses for the run. With
Paul Nolan lived in Minnesota during 9/11. He described the day as he remembered it. “I had never seen my mother look like that before.” He was in elementary school at the time and did not understand the severity of what had happened. However, he said, “As we got older, as years go on, you start to understand a lot more the significance of it and why those emotions were so deeply rooted back then.”
Caporali had a similar experience. “My last memory is sneaking downstairs after my parents went to bed to turn on the news. I’ll always remember watching the pedestrians on the street running from the dust and smoke and at that time not understanding what they were running from,” said Caporali. Most students on campus can tell you where they were on that day. They can recount the stories easily, because like the words that will be on the banner September 10th, “The Pack Never Forgets”.
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features
are you sitting on slave labor? Qasima Wideman Correspondent Students at NC State are likely unaware that many of the metal products we encounter every day on campusfrom the chairs we sit in, the desks we write on, to the door frames and trash cans in our buildings, were made by black and brown prisoners here in North Carolina who are paid next to nothing for their long hours of grueling labor. In fact, a conservative estimate puts 2,321 North Carolina prisoners at work in plants producing goods and performing services used in administration, packaging and distribution, printing, copying, sign production and reclamation. Their labor also includes woodworking, sewing, janitorial products, metal products, upholstery and reupholstery, optical products, laundry, meat processing, farming, canning, and food warehousing for Correctional Enterprises alone. Correctional Enterprises is just one of numerous corporations that make millions in profits off of uncompensated prison labor in North Carolina, and that excludes that fact that prisoners also work within their own prisons making the food sold to them at prices they can’t afford, painting their own cells, to name a few of the tasks those in prison are forced to perform. That is why come September 9th, these vital workers are going on a historic strike. The metal goods on campus are produced by prisoners at the Brown Creek Correctional Institution’s metal plant in Anson County, North Carolina. It is public knowledge that these metal goods are then provided to tax-funded institutions within the state, from public grade schools, hospitals, courthouses, jails and prisons, to universities. I interviewed Charles Cummings, a painting supervisor at Brown Creek, to confirm that NC State was a consumer of their products. “Yes,” he said, “NC State is one of our customers. We’ve
“Prisoner-workers, in
the best of cases, make between 16 and 26 cents an hour. That’s only enough to afford a $1.21 fifteen minute phone call to a loved one after almost a full eight hours of labor” - WRAL done work for NC State several times. We have about 84 inmates at this time that we’re working here.” Prisoners, however, are not simply an invisible workforce. Prisoner-workers, in the best of cases, make between 16 and 26 cents an hour. That’s only enough to afford a $1.21 fifteen minute phone call to a loved one after almost a full eight hours of labor; and prisoners in the Durham County jail aren’t even that lucky.
“...do you know that
they are working these black brothers for a tray of food that consists of beans and rice and bread.” -Anonymous Inmate
“It would cost them twenty five thousand dollars to hire someone to paint just one pod,” writes a prisoner
in the Durham County Detention Center who wishes to remain anonymous, speaking about the cost to the Department of corrections were they to hire a free person to paint the walls of the jail, “and they have these black men doing it... for a tray of food at night that consists of beans and rice and bread.” Multiple detainees in the Durham County Jail report being compensated this way. Another prisoner writes, “I’ve written to let you know what’s been going on in this Plantation of today: do you know that they are working these black brothers for a tray of food that consists of beans and rice and bread? Aramark has contracted the whole jail out, and instead of them hiring someone to work they have the black men in here working for an extra tray of food, beans, rice, bread almost every day–two shifts, kitchen, laundry, sanitation, stripping and waxing of floors, painting and cleaning up sewage water that is backing up into the jail. And the food is cold and half-cooked.” Detainees in Durham County Jail are working long hours for cold, undercooked and unsanitary food. According to Bernard Creek, another prisoner in the Durham Jail, “Aramark, the jail’s food service provider triples the inmates’ hot tray price. The food that they prepare is frozen and in bulk. For example, a meal for a C.O. is $2. One single buffalo chicken sandwich [for a prisoner] is 3.99, no juice, no chips. The ridiculous thing about this is Aramark makes $500.00 in profit just from one day of hot tray sales.” While some detainees work these long hours for meager meals, others work in the hopes of false promises being fulfilled. “I’ve been working for 31 days in the kitchen and was supposed to get 4 days taken off [my sentence],” writes Deontae Richardson, another detainee of the North Carolina Corrections Department, “and upon
me asking for it I was told that I can’t get any. I asked for a copy regarding work detail policy and was told there is no policy… I basically work for free with the intentions of receiving days off my sentence, only to be told no I can’t get any. And it’s not in black and white but made up rules on what they think and who they think should get it. What happened to equal opportunity? I work so I deserve these days.”
“The longer those
people stay, the more money the county gets... Keep everyone in the field working, you keep all the money.” -Vincent Paige,
Activist & Prison Detainee
Prisoners are not taking these human rights abuses in silence. “There was a day people were refusing to go into the kitchen, and they threatened to lock everybody back. The other threat is you’ll be removed from the pod. Those threats keep people in line,” wrote Vincent Paige, an activist and detainee in the jail. “They don’t want to cut days off of those people, because that’s money for them. The longer those people stay, the more money the county gets. The added bonus they get is they’re working in the work pod, and that’s 65 people for free labor. In my opinion, it’s the same thing they used to do in the Old South. Keep everyone in the field working, you keep all the money. 65 people running your jail, from laundry, to sanitation, to cooking your food—all the officers have to do is just sit there, pretty much.”
Features
wednesday, september 7, 2016 | 5
why you need to know about the september 9th prison strike. He is not the first to notice the continuation of plantation politics that plays out behind prison walls. The Thirteenth Amendment states quite notably, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Those who doubt the reality that incarceration has indeed replaced chattel slavery in the United States need look no further than the historic 1871 court ruling in Ruffin v. Commonwealth, which stated “For the time, during his term of service in the penitentiary, he is in a state of penal servitude to the State. He has, as a consequence of his crime, not only forfeited his liberty, but all his personal rights except those which the law in its humanity accords to him. He is for the time being a slave of the State. He is civiliter mortus; and his estate, if he has any, is administered like that of a dead man.”
“He is for the time
being a slave of the State. He is civiliter mortus; and his estate, if he has any, is administered like that of a dead man.” -1871 court ruling in Ruffin v. Commonwealth Commonwealth Incarcerated people nationwide are planning a general strike on September 9th, the 45th anniversary of the Attica Uprising. The 1971 uprising at Attica Prison in New York occurred after pris-
oners had been filing official complaints and requests for months on end to have their basic rights, including and especially fair pay, in addition to adequate access to toilet paper and reasonable religious freedom; to no avail. They developed a formal list of demands and, on September 9th, 1971, were able to control over half of the prison and keep guards hostage with minimal violence in one of the most powerful and least celebrated civil rights protests in American history. On the 13th of September, Governor Nelson Rockefeller oversaw one of the bloodiest crackdowns on political organizing to date in the U.S. State troopers gassed and opened fire on both detainees and guards trapped in a 50-by-50 yard space, killing 29 prisoners and ten guards. Prisoners in North Carolina and throughout the country will celebrate the anniversary of the Attica uprising on September 9th by staging a labor strike in protest of prison slavery. “Think about the work pod,” writes one detainee in the Durham County Jail who is planning to strike on the 9th, “There’s a reason so many people get arrested for such minor infractions. It’s because the jail saves money. They arrest us and let us work in the work
“We need to stop
working. Cost them money.... If the work pod united and struck then we would cost the jail THOUSANDS.” - Anonymous Durham County Jail Detainee
pod. Doesn’t cost them a dime. We need to stop working. Cost them money.... If the work pod united and struck then we would cost the jail THOUSANDS.”
es and produces a free newspaper for incarcerated LGBTQ+ people, and the Inside-Outside Alliance, another local organization supporting prisoners.
This will not be the first major protest by prisoners in the Triangle area against abusive work conditions. The Women’s Prison on Bragg St, just a few miles up the road from Central Prison and NC State campus, was the site of another major prison labor strike in the 1970s. The Bragg Street Women’s prison used to have an enormous laundry facility where incarcerated women were forced to do the laundry for all state employed workers’ uniforms, from hospital scrubs to police uniforms and orange jumpsuits, in extremely hazardous and unfair conditions.
We can also support striking prisoner-workers by demanding our university boycott prison labor, and stop purchasing products from the Brown Creek facility and any other plants enslaving incarcerated people.
In the wake of the acquittal of Joan Little, a black incarcerated woman who survived a sexual assault by a prison guard by stabbing her attacker with an ice pick, the women imprisoned on Bragg Street staged a strike and takeover of the yard that resulted in the laundry facility being permanently shut down and their demands about safety from predatory guards being heard. Supporters on the outside are also organizing for prisoners. On September 9th at 7:30PM, people will gather at Durham Central Park at 501 Foster Street for a march in solidarity with striking prisoners. They are keeping up regular correspondence with prisoners throughout the state and have formed an independent investigation team of community members including formerly incarcerated people to shine light on the human rights abuses in North Carolina’s prisons. Students can support these efforts by writing letters and sending books to prisoners through various local and national organizations that support prisoners, like Prisonbooks NC, Black and Pink- which fosters correspondenc-
“Yes, NC State is one
of our customers. We’ve done work for NC State several times. We have about 84 inmates at this time that we’re working here.” -Charles Cummings,
painting supervisor at Brown Creek
wednesday, september 7, 2016 | 6
features
pack 2 pack lends a helpling hand anahzsa jones Managing Editor Pack2Pack is a program that began this year to help under-resourced students obtain household items that might otherwise be difficult for them to acquire. The program was founded by Taylor Spoon, a 2016 NC State alum with degrees in both international studies and sociology. Pack2Pack was an idea Spoon came up with during her time as an undergraduate interning with the Pack Promise Program. “Every year around move out week, I would see countless students throwing away gently used items that could have been repurposed…I realized that not only off campus students were throwing away gently used items, but also many other members of the greater Raleigh community…That is when I came up with Pack2Pack,” said Spoon. The program is a nonprofit sustainability initiative, given funding by the NCSU sustainability fund. “I applied to the sustainability fund at NCSU for a grant, because it not only directly gives back to the NCSU community, but also reduces waste by recycling items that would have ended up in the dump instead,” said Spoon. Pack2Pack collects gently used items, anything from furniture to bedding to kitchen supplies, from both the campus community and the greater Raleigh area, and washes or refurbished the donations if necessary. The items are then given to the Pack Promise Scholars here at NC State. The Pack Promise Program was created to help under-resourced students integrate smoothly into the college lifestyle. They provide coaching for life skills, as well as academic advice and workshops that focus on a variety of topics, including financial literacy. With the Pack2Pack program, Pack Promise Scholars also receive much needed household items. “These students face higher financial burdens than the general student body, so we wanted to make sure the items were going to students who needed them most,” said Spoon. Surveys were sent over the summer to the program’s members, asking what kinds of items they would need so they could make a concerted effort to obtain and hold onto the items for the students who needed them. Pack2Pack held a “pop up” store in SAS Hall where students could come to claim and pick up items. Spoon worked with several volunteers to make the program run smooth. One of the volunteers, Zakiya Covington, a sophomore in science technology and society, volunteered with the program because “...it was an initiative that I knew would impact the campus in a major way. It also was a way for me to give back to the NC State community. Being a blessing to both the current and incoming students was more than enough reason to take part in program.” Covington was one of the leaders with Pack2Pack who helped to organize pickups, catalog donated items and keep the Pack 2 Pack Facebook page updated. “This program is important because it meets the needs that most people tend to look over or to assume that everyone can meet on their own... It encourages sustainability as well as service to those in need,” said Covington. Over one hundred students attended the first store, and due to the successful collection of donations by Spoon and other volunteers, there were plenty of leftover items. These were catalogued and taken to storage units near campus. Pack Promise scholars who still need items can contact Spoon at tmspoon@ncsu.edu with any questions, or
to come out and look at the items that are left. There is no guarantee that the items students are looking for will be there, and for larger items, students must be able to provide their own transportation. Spoon has big goals for the program. “My hopes for the program’s future are to make it permanent here at NCSU, but also to expand to other universities and cities. I would love to get the program registered as a nonprofit and effect under resourced students everywhere,” said Spoon. While Taylor Spoon works for the widespread realization of her goals, she also plans to work close to home to improve the program. “We are working to change some aspects of the program in the future based on student feedback surveys and budgeting… For the upcoming year I am currently trying to create partnerships with outside organizations in order to sustain funding for the future, as well as building relationships with businesses we rely on.”
opinion
wednesday, september 7, 2016 | 7
can a hashtag trivialize a movement?
KENTON GIBBS
In light of recent events, I realized that no minority group, especially black people, can afford the luxury of remaining silent on the problems that plague us. This has prompted a change in the way that I, as a black man, view and interact with the world.
According to a Winston Salem State student, being woke means, “being aware of what is going on in your environment or in your community”.
Correspondent
The lifestyle changes that myself and many others have made prompt people to comment on our “wokeness.” Some have even told me to caption my pro-black or informative posts with the hashtag #staywoke. So I took a quick peek at the trending topic, but I did not see where the problem was until after a ton of digging. here has been much attention brought to the T topic of race relations in America by recent tragedies and political rhetoric that surrounds these incidents. This caused many people to take an active stance against racial oppression. The use of “woke” to mean being aware of oppression and injustice was popularized by recent anti-racist movements. It was first uttered in the “conscious” community and caught fire from there. The word “woke” has been everywhere from social media posts to The Daily Show when Jordan Klepper satirically said he was woke. The only problem with this surge of #staywoke or “wokeness” is similar to the problem any movement faces when it becomes mainstream. Some members have no idea what the actual concept means or how to interpret it, so they come up with what they believe it means and push that ideology on
others.
word woke?
There were posts of James Baldwin saying “the flag to which you have pledged allegiance…has not pledged allegiance to you,” as well as posts stating that all members of a certain religion were lost and could not be trusted to fight oppression. Either post isn’t purely representative of what staying woke means to all and the latter post definitely doesn’t depict what original users of the term believe.
The aforementioned #staywoke negative social media posts are part of why being “woke” is vilified by many. There were so many divisive, uninformed, sexist, classist and careless posts that it instantly became clear why people despised the term. The sad part is these posts are not the majority, yet they seem to be the only part that people are only remembering.
Those with preconceived notions against being “woke” look and find the worst outliers to represent the entire meaning of the movement. When I looked at the hashtag on Instagram I saw the same thing that you always see on social media: mixed results.
The hashtag has been used to spread images of positivity, black excellence and beauty. Unfortunately, there have also been things so outlandish labeled with #staywoke that people like Erykah Badu, one of the unofficial queens of wokeness, has come out saying, “Y’all make ‘woke’ look bad. ‘Ion even wanna be woke now.”
The sad reality is that she has a point. The phrase “stay woke” has been dragged through filth by not only those who oppose and mock it but also by those who use it in the wrong way and for the wrong reasons. When I went home over the summer and found myself explaining some of the views I hold on the inequities of the society we currently live in, I became the target of much ridicule and criticism. One of my family members said, “Oh, so you woke now?” Everyone in the room stared at me as if she had accused me of murder. So the question became, why is there such an intense stigma around the
I have never said that I was woke but when I asked my family why being “woke” was such an indictment of my character, the answer was very enlightening. I was told that, “Most people who say they’re woke think they’re better than everybody and nobody wants to be associated with uppity people.”
Any idiot can take a hashtag and use it for ignorance. If I were to get a coalition of 30 people together and tell them to use an NCSU related hashtag to spread misinformation and hate does that mean that all of us students now stand for that or does that mean those morons don’t know what we stand for?
Whether it be with the conscious community, student community, or any other, if you look for bad you’ll find it. I see it as a balancing act of being as positive as possible. There will always be people who taint what a movement stands for, but should that detract from every other aspect of it?
AACC 25 ANNIVERSARY th
Examining Wellness in African American Spaces:Yesterday,Today, and Tomorrow The African American Cultural Center (AACC) invites you to participate in our annual Harambee!! program on Thursday, September 8, 2016. Harambee!! is the Swahili word meaning “Let us come together!” At Harambee!! we welcome new members into our family and celebrate all the members of our community. True to the tradition of the African American Cultural Center, Harambee!! opens with the call of the djembe drum to celebrate our 25th Anniversary. This year we include a special welcome to our Assistant Director, Mrs. Dawn Morgan.
Honoring the Sankofa principle, the AACC is partnering with the NCSU Libraries Special Collections Research Center’s Wolf Tales to collect stories about your experiences in and with the AACC. So, answer the call of the drum and come to Harambee!! 2016 Best Harambee Ever - and experience the excitement of the 25th Anniversary. Please remember to bring a non-perishable food item to place in the Feed the Pack bin so we can help those in need. Help us Stamp out hunger at NC State.
Hear voices of the community speak out regarding the challenges we face as a nation. The program starts with Harambee!! 2016 is presented in partnership with the pouring of libation by Dr. Craig Brookins. Raising AYA Ambassadors, the Division of Academic and awareness to the pulse of the community, watch our Student Affairs (DASA), DH Hill Special Collecstudents and community perform “My Heart Shouts!” tions, Feed the Pack, NC State Alumni’s Black Giving praise to the triumphant endurance across Alumni Association, Nubian Message, the our many generations, John Miller IV African Student Union and the Eta choreographed “Can You Hear Me?” Omicron Chapter of Alpha Phi which incorporates spoken Alpha Fraternity, Incorporated. THE word by Ms. Cynthia Sharpe. AFRICAN AMERICAN Ms. Miah Faggart will also CULCURAL CENTER perform at Harambee 2016!! presents
HARAMBEE!! 2016 Best Harambee Ever
A F R I C A N A M E R I C A N C U LT U R A L C E N T E R S T U D E N T S , FAC U LT Y, & S TA F F WELCOME RECEPTION THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2016 5:00 – 7:30 pm PIEDMONT BALLROOM TALLEY STUDENT UNION