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Tuesday, February 16, 2016
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Volume 109, Issue 21 | the-standard.org The Standard/The Standard Sports
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One-act play gets students talking about systematic racism as part of African American Heritage Month By Emily Joshu Staff Reporter @EmilyJoshu
Dequon Miller jumps up for a shot against Indiana State on Feb. 13.
Ryan Welch/THE STANDARD
On Tuesday, Feb. 9, Missouri State University’s Shattering the Silences series and the Department of Theatre and Dance presented “Dutchman,” a one-act play by Amiri Baraka that centers on a two-character confrontation. The confrontation between a black man and a white woman is fueled by race, prejudice and fatal attraction. The lead characters are Clay and Lula, portrayed by senior theatre and dance major Dejuan Boyd and senior musical theatre major Emma Rathe. Lula boards the subway train after Clay, accusing him of inappropriately staring at her. A take-charge and promiscuous personality, Lula simultaneously flirts with Clay while repeatedly pointing out his race. She makes comments such as, “Your grandfather was a slave” and “You’re a wellknown type,” claiming that she knows everything about African American men. Lula goes into a sex-crazed, racist monologue about Clay, causing him to grab her by the arms. He reaches his breaking point and claims that he could murder her. Instead, she stabs Clay, ordering the passengers on the train to dispose of his body. They comply without question. Once she is alone on the train again, another black man enters, played by sophomore Darian Bengston in the theatre and dance department. They exchange a flirtatious glance as the play ends, implying that the process is about to start all over again. In addition to reflecting the 1960s Civil Rights Movement in which the play was written, director of the play and assistant professor of dance Darryl Clark said that Baraka wrote Dutchman as “an act of purging himself of the emotional remnants of his marriage to a white woman.” Following the play, Clark and the cast held an open panel discussion. The case members were asked about the experience of working on “Dutchman,” and many found connections between the play and reality. “As a young, black male it’s not anything to be learned from ‘Dutchman’ because it’s real life,” Bengston said. “Things haven’t really changed that much, still.” In the play, Lula calls Clay by a variety of racial slurs and uses her sexual history with Maddy Cushman/THE STANDARD black men to define their per- Things start to get heated between Clay and Lula, sonalities. Though she shows the two main characters in “Dutchman.” an obvious attraction to Clay, her treatment of him reduces him to what she believes is a second-class citizen. “There’s a lot of ignorance that’s in the air that goes throughout society, and through this ignorance there is a lack of understanding. Through that lack of understanding, it builds into a hatred,” Boyd said. “We stereotype, we divide each other, and it’s through a lack of understanding.” The cast believes that this hatred is preventable with intervention. In the play, the pasu See DUTCHMAN, page 10
u See BEARS, page 6
LGBT Resource Center is expanding, moving to a new location soon
How to go green in the dining halls
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questions and ideas, according to Upchurch. The LGBT Resource Center offers a variety of programs and services for students. Outside of physical programs, their website also provides resources for students such as terminology links and teaching tools. Additionally, there is a map showing all of the gender neutral restrooms on campus. “It just kind of creates a space where it’s safe for us to ask questions and get references to places on campus,” Upchurch said. One new resource is designed for transgender students, “Out of the Closet.” This program provides clothes mainly for transitioning transgender students but also for those in need. This new space is increasingly needed by the LGBT community on campus.
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Ursery: Dump Trump
E IF Alumni return to work at MSU
“This is something that we’re behind times in and needs to happen really badly,” Upchurch said. This expansion is expected to fulfill all of the current needs, mainly, space. Although it will remain on a basement level, the expansion of the LGBT Resource Center will be directly accessible from outside Freudenberger House. The new resource center will provide easier and more convenient access for students and the expansion will allow for it to provide more programs and resources. “If we can have those conversations about what’s going on with the media nationally and the media locally too and stuff going on like that, we can be a lot more organized,” Upchurch said. “And have that sense of community which would be really cool and hopefully we’ll bring more students here to our campus.”
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The LGBT Resource Center is finally getting its long awaited, much needed expansion. Freudenberger House will be the new home for the LGBT Resource Center beginning in the next few months. The new center will replace and expand the currently one, now crammed in the basement of University Hall. “We don’t really have a lot of space to do activities and things like that,” Jordan Upchurch, president of Advocates and a marketing major, said. “If we could do that in a center or space that is safe, that’d be really cool.” Currently, the plans for the expansion of the LGBT Resource Center are set to finish
sometime in March. According to Upchurch, furniture and carpet have already been ordered. The new center will have more computers than the current resource center as well. Dr. Lori Patton Davis, associate professor at Indiana University-Purdue, will also come in and talk to coordinators and students about organizing the center to best suit Missouri State University. She will serve as consultant for multicultural programming. Students can meet with her Feb. 18 in PSU 313 at 11 a.m. or 6 p.m. The new space will also be shared with the Multicultural Resource Center, another resource center that is also currently cramped in a too small space. Dominiece Hoelyfield is the assistant director-coordinator of LGBT Student Services and is a wonderful resource for
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By Cortlynn Stark Staff Reporter @Cortlynn_Stark
TS R O Softball gets two shutouts out of three games