Led by Band Perry, Spring Fest excites crowd Q&A: The Spectrum sits down with Gloriana THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT PUBLICATION OF THE UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO, SINCE 1950
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Top 10 athletes of D1 era – No. 3: Javon McCrea
MONDAY, MAY 5, 2014
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Volume 63 No. 78
‘The only hood with green’ Differing sides prevalent on development of medical school in McCarley Gardens MADELAINE BRITT Asst. News Editor
It’s a Friday afternoon in McCarley Gardens, a housing complex in the Fruit Belt area of the lower East Side of Buffalo. Afternoon light filters through the trees lining the red brick townhouses. Weaving through the streets, a school bus drops off a child, who, with her backpack beating against her, runs to a group of men standing beside parked cars. Across from them, McCarley Gardens resident A.D. Cooper talks on his phone while a woman pushes a stroller with her two children to their apartment, closing the door behind her. In the McCarley Gardens community on Michigan Avenue in downtown Buffalo, life carries on normally. In the eyes of resident Eric McGriff Jr., who grew up in the low-income housing development and has lived there for 26 years, this particular Friday is like any other day. For him, McCarley Gardens is home, where everyone knows each other and looks out for each other. Nobody gets hurt here and no house is broken into, McGriff said. “This is what we know,” he said. Cooper agrees. A resident of the complex for 18 years, he has raised his kids here. As he takes a swig of whiskey with his neighbor, he points across the street to where he used to sled when he was a kid.
Jordan Oscar, The Spectrum Growing up in McCarley Gardens, Eric McGriff Jr. has lived in the complex for 26 years. He stands in front of the same tree he stood at as a young child. See more photos with this story at ubspectrum.com.
This was always home for him and his family. The same basketball courts, the same families. But there is change in the air. Across the complex, there are different sounds. Construction workers congregate in front of caution tape. Students filter in and out of Roswell Park Cancer Institute. The blue University at Buffalo emblem is hung, and metal building structures grow by the hour. Just steps from the McCarley Gardens townhouses, the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus (BNMC) is growing. With six facilities currently housed on the BNMC site, UB is expanding into what its website calls “a medical school for the 21st century.” The project is a part of the university’s $375 million funding,
which is partially paid for by NYSUNY 2020. The university is one of 14 member institutions of BNMC. Accounting for 120 acres and 6.5 million square feet, BNMC brings in one million visitors each year. Housing research centers and medical services, including Kaleida Health and the Buffalo Medical Group, BNMC, Inc. is a not-forprofit entity that oversees the actions of all 14 organizations. Since BNMC’s founding in 2001, its population has risen from 7,000 people to 12,000. With UB Medical School to open in 2016, an expected 5,000 more people will be on the grounds. Yet for the campus’ surrounding neighborhoods – with the Fruit Belt neighborhood to the east and Allentown to the west – the pop-
ulation is struggling. According to the dean of UB’s architecture school, Robert Shibley, the Fruit Belt neighborhood contains 2,000 people, making the project an opportunity for the area to bring in revenue and new residents. “We are building down there because it is absolutely the best thing for the relationship between health care, research and education for medical students,” Shibley said. “That’s our mission. At the same time, we recognize, I think, that we exist in this community that hosts us and we see the way in which our choices to do a better job at our mission, create opportunities for public policy and developers and residents to take advantage of those improvements and increasing wealth.” Three years ago, St. John Baptist Church, which owns the McCarley Gardens housing complex, proposed a $15 million deal to sell the 160-acre property to the UB Foundation, a private organization that handles all donations to the university and controls close to $1 billion of UB assets and endowment funds. Reverend Michael Chapman, the pastor at St. John Baptist Church, refused to comment. After outrage from community members, who went as far as sending a petition to the Buffalo Common Council, the plan was taken off of the table, according to BNMC CEO Matthew Enstice.
“On the whole, we want the neighborhoods to thrive. We will never go into the neighborhoods and redevelop the neighborhoods,” Enstice said. “We will never tell them what to do. Just as our institutions are running their businesses, we are going to go to them and ask, ‘How can we be helpful to you?’ That’s the role we play right now. “ Many residents were not aware that the plan to tear down McCarley Gardens, which surfaced in June 2013, is now off the table. “I hear they will tear down houses. For a lot of poor people, it’s a nice place to live,” said 67-year-old Ana Rodriguez, who has been living in the housing complex since February. Rodriguez, who lives with her granddaughter while being treated at Roswell Park Cancer Institute for a lung issue, thinks the residents will have to be moved somewhere else if BNMC needs the land. As she walked around the grounds with her dog, Bruno, and spoke with neighbors, she said she enjoys living in the complex. Down the block, resident Efigenia Orellana stood inside the screen door with her toddler grandson, Gavin. Orellana, who has lived in McCarley Gardens for seven years, resides across the street from St. John. She does not speak much English but said she enjoyed the “quiet, passive” comSEE MCCARLEY, PAGE 2
For some students, a In search of happiness call to the religious life Amid cultural surge, UB community weighs in UB students discuss vocational callings within the Catholic faith
on definition of happiness BRIAN WINDSCHITL
Asst. Features Editor
joe konze jr., the spectrum
Christine Schaefer, a junior history and German major, has been considering the religious life within the Catholic faith – which, for women, means becoming a nun.
ANNE MULROONEY
Asst. Features Editor
Regardless of his or her dream vocation, most every student is driven by passion and ambition. But some students are different. They are fueled more by faith than anything else – in fact, some students dream of dedicating their lives to the Catholic Church. Their vocational calling – as a priest, a nun or a simple disciple of Christ – is their first priority. Catholic priests, nuns and monks are required to take vows of celibacy – meaning they cannot be married or engage in any kind of sexual conduct. Christine Schaefer, a junior history and German major, has been considering the religious life – which, for women, means becoming a nun – for about a year. She finds these vows of celibacy appealing. “I know sometimes people are like, ‘Oh my gosh, to be celibate is one of the most intimidating things.’ For me, I haven’t found that intimidating,” Schaefer said. “It was actually more of my wanting to run away from even the possibility of being impure, because I thought I couldn’t be chaste in marriage – meaning that I wouldn’t be able to use sex and
my body in the correct way.” Diane Christian, a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor in the English department and former nun, believes these vows of celibacy are important to the religious life. “I think the position of sexual abstinence is a valid one,” Christian said in an email. “For the old witness to Christ and afterlife reasons, and for a redress to the oversexed culture about us.” Although Schaefer believes her draw to the religious life could partly be a reaction to her fear of marriage, she also finds the intense meditation of the lifestyle beautiful. She strongly believes in the power of prayer and how it can heal the world. “It sometimes seems like people think if you’re cloistered and cut off from the world, you’re not really doing God’s work,” Schaefer said. “But if you’re praying and that’s your mission, it’s so important. It’s hard to see, because we can’t see the spiritual realm, but the power is there. It’s real.” Christian became a nun chiefly because of the “nobility and idealism” she saw in the vocation. At 21, she entered the religious life; at 24, she took her first vows; and at SEE RELIGIOUS LIFE, PAGE 6
Pop culture dominates our society, a society composed of isms – materialism, capitalism, classism. With such complex ideas clouding mainstream thought, where does happiness fit in? Today, the hyper-consumer mentality has created a culture that brands happiness as a commodity – something that can be bought or attained rather than something innate or subjective. Perhaps a better question to ask is: What is happiness? Each person’s definition of the term has a major impact on how that individual lives – why that person wakes up every morning, what he or she seeks, hopes and dreams. Recently, Pharrell Williams’ hit song, “Happy,” has topped Billboard charts, becoming hugely popular worldwide for not only its infectious vibes and bubbly lyrics but also for its message. “Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof,” Williams sings. “Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth.” The message is clear: Williams believes happiness is great. As for what happiness is? The artist never answers that question, instead keeping his song ambiguous and open to interpretation. Never in “Happy” does Williams touch on what happiness is to him, just that he has it and loves having it. Perhaps the genius is in the simplicity. His song encapsulates how much of society views happiness – a concept, vague and loosely defined, that is held as the ultimate goal of life. So, just what is happiness? That depends on who you ask. A scientist might tell you that happiness is constituted in the release of specific chemicals in the brain – dopamine and endorphins
art by amber sliter, the spectrum
among them. A religious figure may say that happiness is found in faith in the divine. A musician could argue that true joy is woven into the sound of harmonies and melodies – “Music is my religion,” the immortal Jimi Hendrix famously quipped. David Schmid, an English professor at UB who teaches pop culture classes, says attaining happiness is a continual chase – maybe one that will never reach fruition – and questions if happiness is a basic human right. “Happiness is not achieving a certain goal or reaching a certain stage,” Schmid said. “Happiness is something that is meant to be incomplete – something that you are constantly striving toward.” The abstruseness of Williams’ “happiness” is its true brilliance. Playing on the childhood song, “If you are happy and you know it, clap your hands,” Williams sings that nothing can bring him down and tells his listeners to “Clap along if you know what happiness is to you.” But do they know? Does he even know? Society has made it so the pursuit of happiness isn’t only akin to
climbing a steep, perilous mountain. It has made it akin to climbing that mountain blindfolded. For all of these varieties of happiness, there are infinite others. What may bring joy and contentment to one person may bring dejection and depression to another. And for every Pharrell Williams, there is a Lorde – the 17-year-old New Zealand performer whose socially critical “Royals” topped mainstream radio for much of 2013. Lorde, born Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O’Connor, constantly critiques society’s message of happiness throughout her debut album, Pure Heroine. In “Tennis Court,” the album’s opening song, she introduces her message: “Getting pumped up on the little bright things I bought / But I know they’ll never own me.” In “Royals,” she sings: “Everyone’s like, Cristal, Maybach, diamonds on your timepiece / Jet planes, islands, tigers on a gold leash / We don’t care / We aren’t caught up in your love affair.” Lorde exposes the pervasive idea that buying and owning more – and more, and then more still – SEE Happiness, PAGE 5