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Friday, Sept. 28, 2018 VOLUME LXXXVIII ISSUE IV SINCE 1935 www.oswegonian.com
Ceramicist visits campus
Penfield celebrates books Students travel, Library encourages students to read during Banned Books Week
study abroad
Kenny Burnham Contributing Writer news@oswegonian.com
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Jessica Wickham Chief Copy Editor jwickham@oswegonian.com Jeremy Randall, a ceramicist from Tully, New York, visited Oswego State Sept. 25 as part of the Visiting Artist Series, where he emphasized the importance of telling stories and conveying complex texture through objects. His presentation, held at 6 p.m. in the Marano Campus Center auditorium, displayed pictures of some of his pieces and the reallife places that inspired them. He also played a couple videos of him throwing clay onto surfaces to imprint the texture onto the material to use later. Randall, who earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Syracuse University and Masters of Fine Arts from the University of Florida, said much of his work displayed in galleries throughout the country is inspired by everyday textures and color pallets that are often overlooked by others. “I like to look at surfaces,” Randall said. “I like to look at how weather affects surfaces—the way that the natural elements will start to corrode, invade, break down—and look to those things for clues that I can have to include in the work.”
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To celebrate Banned Books Week, Oswego State’s Penfield Library dedicated Sept. 23 to 29 to advocating for the continued reading of controversial books. Activities included throwing a banned book into the frying pan, and getting to keep it, creating banned book-themed buttons and bookmarks and having students read excerpts from banned books. In one activity, students censored a page from a banned book, making a poem out of the remaining words. Laura Donnelly, who teaches creative writing classes on campus, oversaw the activity at the event. “It’s called erasure poetry,” Donnelly said. “In some ways, it’s a strange crossing-out of language, which we are not advocating. It’s also thinking of the way language can transform and we find new things in old text.” The frying pan book giveaway was fun, if odd, said Damian Campana, junior Creative Writing major. “I liked the absurdity of throwing a book into a frying pan,” Campana said. “Just because that’s seems ridiculous, like why would you do that? First off, that’s not even a convenient way of burning things. But, I thought
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the absurdity was entertaining.” Campana said the weirdness served a greater purpose for the event’s theme. “I think overall it was just a good satire event, if you will,” Campana said. “We’re actively pointing out how absurd it is, like now we’re throwing [the books] in the frying pan.” According to the official website for Banned Books Week, the celebratory week started in 1982 in response to surge in the number
Kassadee Paulo | The Oswegonian Those who attended the kick-off event threw books into a frying pan to represent burned books.
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Kassadee Paulo | The Oswegonian Students use a button maker to create their own buttons to promote reading books that have been challenged.
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of challenges to books in schools, bookstores and libraries.” While the event is relatively recent, the practice of banning books is almost as old as books themselves. Many books have been banned because of obscenities, but Donnelly said it can sometimes be more complicated than that. “They might say the issue is obscenity, but in the story of ‘Huck Finn,’ it was challenging temporary notions of race and race relations,” she said. Now it is less about outright banning, but rather individual schools saying they do not want the book taught at their school. Donnelly mentioned an exception in the book “Howl” by Allan Ginsburg. The book was deemed obscene, and the publisher was actually put on trial. The book was not found to be obscene because it was a work of art. According to the American Library Association, the most banned book of 2017 was “Thirteen Reasons Why” by Jay Asher. It has been banned in certain school districts for its depiction of suicide. With certain issues like these, it can seem appealing to want to remove a book that people think would cause harm.
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Maria Pericozzi Photo Director mpericozzi@oswegonian.com Studying abroad in Jamaica was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Isabella Falcingo said during the “I, Too, Am Study Abroad” panel discussion on Sept. 25. The panel discussion was made of six students that had participated in a variety of programs Oswego State has to offer, including summers or semesters abroad and week-long, faculty-led courses. “I had an amazing time [studying abroad], and I absolutely do not regret it at all,” Falcingo said. Associate Director of Education Abroad Lizette Alvarado was the mediator of the panel discussion. Her job at Oswego State is to promote, recruit and send students abroad to other countries. She works to get students from underrepresented groups to study abroad. “I am very passionate about my job,” Alvarado said. “Even in the most stressful times, I can still tell my coworkers in my office that I still love my job. I love sending students to study abroad in other countries.” Alvarado said many students come back after studying abroad and say they have learned about themselves.
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