The Official Student Newspaper of Eckerd College
Volume 7, Issue I Sept. 25, 2015
courtesy of Tom Scherberger The new art building will cover roughly 34,000 square feet. Construction for the project will begin in December.
New visual arts building in the works
By Beau Maysey Staff Writer Students attempting to reach the Ransom Arts Center this semester have run into a hurdle — a large wire fence now surrounds most of the perimeter where construction continues on the Chapel Pond. Students must find their way to the building by passing around Kappa Dorm Complex.
Starting in December, the Visual Arts Center will be torn down and replaced with a brand new building to hold the art department. The entire project’s price tag, including connected Chapel Pond rennovations and updated air conditioning systems amounts to nearly 20 million dollars. Eckerd Director of Construction Bill McKenna said that in the next two years, the familiar landmark will be completely remade, which was also confirmed by President East-
man at his “Pizza with the President” event. “It’s a dramatically new building, radically different,” McKenna said. Historically, the center for Eckerd College’s visual arts department has moved around until 1978, when it was moved to its current location, according to the Eckerd website. Since then, Ransom has housed most of Eckerd’s visual art courses, equipment and smaller exhibitions (with larger ones held at Cobb Gallery).
The plan for the new, unnamed art building is a huge complex of two crossing arms, resembling a cross from above. The entire space around Ransom will be razed in preparation for this new center, which will also be linked to a chiller loop water system in Wireman Chapel. Although the Ransom Arts Center’s issues are not pressing, the visual arts building will be going through a huge upgrade in size. According to McKenna, while Ransom occupies
18,000 square feet, the expanded building will take up close to 34,000 square feet. McKenna, as well as Visual Arts Professor Arthur Skinner, have stated some of the numerous advantages this larger art building will offer, a larger critique room, more space for the dark room that is currently upstairs and a studio dedicated towards video and photography, complete with a green screen.
See Visual Arts, page 3
Charles Blow inspires campus
By Emma Cotton Editor-in-chief
photo by Emma Cotton Charles Blow spoke with conviction in Fox Hall on Sept. 8.
On the evening of Sept. 8, Charles Blow spoke in Fox Hall in front of a standing-room-only crowd. His voice was slow and steady as he described the injustices imposed upon black men and women in presentday America. The New York Times columnist has travelled around the country to talk about his memoir, Fire Shut Up in My Bones, and found one of his largest followings at Eckerd. “This might be one of the bigger crowds I’ve ever spoken to about this book,” he said shortly after taking the stage. According to Professor of Political Science William Felice, who helped coordinate Blow’s visit, there were over 500 people in the room. After a short introduction and a
few jokes, Blow launched. “This year is the 60th year anniversary of the savage murder of Emmett Till,” he said. He described Till, a 14-year-old black boy from Chicago who was kidnapped, beaten, shot, tied by the neck to the metal fan of a cotton gin and pushed into the Tallahatchie River. The murderers were two white men. They were angry because Till had supposedly whistled at a white woman. Blow described Till’s body. It was unidentifiable. At the funeral, he said, Till’s mother insisted that the coffin remain open so that visitors could see what was done to her child. Till’s murderers were acquitted. Blow spoke with a low voice, his eyes on the crowd. Each word had its own individual power. “That first 30 minutes in the evening, you could hear a pin drop,” Felice said. “I mean, people were mesmerized.”
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The Emmett Till case, Blow said, was the first real Black Lives Matter story. Black Lives Matter, an activist movement, didn’t officially begin until after the shooting of 17-yearold Treyvon Martin, but represents situations similar to Till’s murder. The movement was not only the main thread of Blow’s speech but is also the subject for many of his columns in The New York Times. Story after story, Blow described the horrifying circumstances under which black men and women have been brutally killed. “Since the shootings of Treyvon Martin and Jordan Davis and Michael Brown and Tamir Rice and John Crawford and Sam DuBose and Rekia Boyd and Yvette Smith and the killing of Eric Garner and many others, the nation has been engaged in a new discussion about race and justice and civil rights.”
See Blow , page 4 The Current is a free, biweekly student newspaper produced at Eckerd College. Opinions expressed in this publication are those of the writers.