Humans of Pepperdine .. Jaxon Burgess Franki Hooks Gretchen Batcheller Juan Carlos Hugues

A picture speaks a thousand words.

Turn that picture into fashion, and it could change the world.

Jaxon Burgess, a first-year Pepperdine law student and Seaver alumnus, has always been interested in clothes and making a difference. Drawing inspiration from TOMS shoes founder Blake Mycoskie, Burgess decided he wanted to pursue a similar path.

“Creating a business that can be something cool but also help the world at the same time was just a really cool thing,” Burgess said.

It wasn’t until a mission trip to the Dominican Republic that Burgess really found his calling. He said the trip opened his eyes to a way for him to combine his love for clothes and others.

He also realized he could use photography as a part of his new idea.

“When we were there, I kind of just noticed the simplicity of

how it’s so universal to take a picture with a camera,” Burgess said. Jaxon Burgess

This sparked his idea for his clothing brand Living In Frame. The company sends cameras to Changes the different communities where someone takes a picture and sends those photos back. Then World One the photos are printed on sweatshirts and T-shirts. Living in Frame sells the clothes online, Thread at A time and 25% of profits go back to the community where the photos by Lydia duPeriercame from.

Cameras have already been sent to cities in the U.S., Kenya and Nicaragua. Burgess said he hopes the company can continue expanding to become global.

“We are really just looking to reach out to empowering causes that really create change in the world,” Burgess said.

For Burgess, clothes are more than a fashion statement; they are a creative way for him to leave his mark on the world.

Franki Hooks Tweets What’s on Her Mind

Photo courtesy of Jaxon Burgess

by Kaelin Mendez

Though people may not always know her face, people know her Twitter account and her name: Franki Hooks.

“Someone was like, ‘I thought this was a burner account, and Franki Hooks was a fake name,’” Hooks said.

The senior psychology major has been on Twitter since August 2014.

“People would tweet stupid things,” Hooks said about being on the social networking platform in high school. “And I feel like everyone kind of grew out of it. Except, I didn’t.”

She said she spends her free time on Twitter, tweeting about five times a day.

Hooks fills her account with posts about Pepperdine, the jobs she’s worked — now at a doctor’s office and before at a grocery store — and many of her spur of the moment thoughts.

She especially enjoys being on Twitter when something new happens at Pepperdine — like when a controversial incident occurs or administrators share new information.

“Twitter’s the future ‘cause I learned that Pepperdine was closing campus on Twitter,” Hooks said about the decision to not return to campus in Fall 2020. “But that’s because I’m always on Twitter, so I saw it when it was tweeted like 18 seconds ago.”

After the campus closure announcements, several students, including Hooks, took to Twitter to voice their thoughts on the matter. She said with every Pepperdine decision and incident, people go to Twitter to put out their feelings and opinions and see what others are saying, creating a virtual community some are calling ‘Pepperdine Twitter.’

“I feel like we just came together out of all the soreness of all this,” Hooks said.

And next time, she will be right there along with them, posting just what she’s thinking.

“Every time Pepperdine sends an email, it’s like, you need to get on Twitter,” Hooks said.

Gretchen Batcheller Launches Into Art

by Samantha Torre

Photo courtesy of Gretchen Batcheller (top left)

Painting has always been a major With the help of her high school art part of Art Professor Gretchen Batchell- teacher, Batcheller entered and won er’s life. several contests which boosted Batchell-

She said it was a way to connect with er’s confidence as she decided to declare family — especially her grandmother herself an art major upon entering who taught art classes for adults in her college. studio — and a place to ground herself. “It just became all very apparent

“I painted one of my first paint- that I was just ready to launch into the ings with her in watercolor,” Batcheller art-making full-time,” Batcheller said. said. “I had just turned 5 years old, and Batcheller’s time with her grand[the picture was] a landscape of Mount mother was what led her to consider Rainier.” teaching fine arts as a career. Batcheller

After Batcheller was diagnosed with said teaching allows her to watch her leukemia at 13, she pushed herself more students mature and grow artistically as into painting. she imparts her own wisdom. Although

“That sort of repositioned my tra- her students tend to joke with her about jectory of what I would do, for I was on her advice, Batcheller said she loves treatments for about three-and-a-half, knowing that they remember it enough almost four years,” Batcheller said. to take it to heart in that way.

After beating leukemia, Batcheller “I think one of the reasons why I love volunteered for years at a summer camp academia is that I love learning,” Batchfor children with cancer. Batcheller’s eller said. “And that’s something that leukemia made it harder for her to take helps us to evolve and grow and change part in the sports she enjoyed, and she and become better human beings as devoted that time to painting. Soon, well.” painting encompassed a large portion of her life. Juan Carlos Hugues Inspires Radical Love

by Annabelle Childers

As a high school student, Juan Carlos Hugues was at war with his identities. Hugues now proudly identifies as gay, Latinx and Christian, specifically Church of Christ.

Hugues, a senior psychology and religion major, served as president during the 2019-2020 academic year for Crossroads — now called Crossroads Gender and Sexuality Alliance — and firmly advocates that Christianity should be a religion welcoming to all people.

“That is my life’s mission,” Hugues said. “To make sure that everyone feels love, because I have experienced a lack of love from my community.”

Hugues moved from his home in Panama to the United States in 2004 after his father decided to start a Latinx Church of Christ in Spartanburg, South Carolina.

“Regardless of where I was in Panama or South Carolina, the heteronormativity, the sexism, the homophobia was prevalent,” Hugues said.

Hugues said as he grew up, his experiences with surrounding communities began to shape the way he viewed his identities, cultivating the idea that homosexuality and Christianity could not coexist.

“In Panama, my uncles would talk about how gay people are like cockroaches because they come out of the closet,” Hugues said. “So, you hear things like that and it’s degrading, and then it starts creating this internalized homophobia.”

That idea began to change once Hugues came to Pepperdine and had meaningful interactions with faculty like Steve Rouse, professor of psychology, and Al Sturgeon, former University Church of Christ pastor.

“All of those things made me feel like, ‘Wow, maybe the story I have been told about God growing up is not who God really is,” Hugues said.

Still attending Photo courtesy of Juan Carlos Hugues a Church of Christ, Hugues continues to stay true to his roots despite his past experiences with church exclusivity.

“It’s what feels like home to me, and I have the right just as anybody else to say that the Church of Christ is also my home,” Hugues said.