Aug. 29, 2016

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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH ALABAMA

MONDAY AUG 29 2016 VOL 59 ISS 4

Inside SGA holds first meeting

Flood aftermath

Senators outline new goals for the 2016-2017 academic year. Page 3

Hear a story from survivors of the recent flooding in Louisiana. Page 4

Jeffrey Jay visits campus Nationally-renowned trans comedian performs at the Student Center Ballroom.

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LIFE

NEWS

USA theatre holds auditions for new year

Safety Neiko Robinson is a junior majoring in communication at USA. Photo courtesy of USAjaguars.com.

Student Spotlight: Neiko Robinson Actors on stage at the performance of “Interplanet Janet.” She’s a galaxy girl. Photo courtesy of Cassidy Dangler

By Megan McDowell | Copy Editor

The University of South Alabama theatre department began auditions for this year’s selected plays on the first day of class.

The auditions determined casting for the main stage shows to be performed this semester.

Similar auditions will be held the first day of class in the spring 2017 semester.

Despite casting only two of the four shows to be produced this school year, the USA theatre department has announced the shows for the entire 2016-2017 season.

By Casie Carr | Reporter

The theatre department will start the season with the musical choice for the year, “Heathers the Musical,” by Kevin Murphey and Lawrence O’Keef.

The musical will be directed by Dr. Lars Tatom, chair and associate professor of the theatre department, and be will performed Sept. 23-25, 2930 and Oct. 1.

The musical is a stage retelling of the 1988 movie version starring Winona Ryder.

It tells the story of Veronica Sawyer and her attempt to join the meangirl clique, the Heathers, at her high

school.

According to Cassidy Dangler, a third-year theatre major cast as Heather Chandler in the play, the theatre department has already begun to work on the musical.

“We started rehearsals for Heathers this past Monday,” Dangler said.

“For me it has been different than normal because I am currently still on a performance contract at Story Land in New Hampshire, playing Little Miss

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Neiko Robinson, junior communication major, plays as safety on the USA football team and is a newcomer to the Jags.

Robinson chose the University of South Alabama for his junior year.

“My family being so close, and the upcoming opportunities this program has, made it seem like a good fit,” Robinson said.

Robinson originally attended Pensacola State his freshman year and

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Kate Brueggermann dances in the middle of the crowd at the Week of Welcome block part. Photo by Jaccob Hearn.

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USA football vs Georgia Southern (Parents’ Weekend) Saturday, Sept. 10 6 p.m. - 10 p.m.

Location: Ladd-Pebbles Stadium

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Archduke Piano Trio with violinist Enen Yu, cellist Guo-Sheng Huang & pianist Robert Holm Tuesday, Sept. 13 7 p.m. - 9 p.m.

Location: Laidlaw Performing Arts Center Room 1205

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USA Women’s Soccer vs Georgia Southern Sunday, Sept. 18 1 p.m. - 4 p.m.

Location: Soccer Field

Wilters Lecture Series Tuesday, Sept. 20 7 p.m. - 9:30 p.m.

Location: Student Center Ballroom

USA Children’s & Women’s Bell Ringing Ceremony Wednesday, Sept. 21 4 p.m. - 5 p.m.

Location: USA Children’s & Women’s Hospital Courtyard

Jag Health & Wellness Day Wednesday, Sept. 28 10 a.m. - 6 p.m. Location: Student Health Center

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Managing Editor | Alanna Whitaker acw905@jagmail.southalabama.edu Monday, Aug. 29, 2016

SGA senate holds first meeting

SAY something!

251-460-6312 08-22-2016

4th Degree Theft | USA Dorm – Delta 5 A blue Huffy bicycle and a red rear-view mirror were stolen from a bike rack. The items are valued at less than $100.

08-22-2016

Harassment| USA Dorm – Gamma parking lot An individual reported harassment. No additional information was available.

The Student Government Association discussed the upcoming semester. Photo by Jason Ruffin

By Jason Ruffin | Life Editor

The Student Government Association held its first meeting of the semester in the Student Center Ballroom on Aug. 22, 2016.

On Monday night, SGA leaders talked about the University of South Alabama’s upcoming app, The Buzz, which SGA Vice President Darshan Patel said will be released sometime this year.

The Buzz is made and hosted by

USA Today.

The app will combine all of USA’s media outlets, including The Vanguard, into one app that students can easily find.

Another project SGA is working on is voter registration.

SGA Attorney General JuWan Robinson outlined his goal to register 300 new voters by organizing voter registration drives before the 2016 November presidential elections.

There was also good news for fans

of cricket. The SGA has been working closely with USA’s cricket team to find space and funds for a new cricket pitch.

A pitch is the strip of field leading from the pitcher’s mound to the batter.

The team also hopes to use some of the funds for new cricket gear and has plans to use the pitch to host a three-game home series with Auburn University.

The cricket team currently uses USA’s intramural fields and travels to Houston, Texas, and Miami, Florida, regularly to compete with other universities across the country.

SGA members voted to move the meeting time from 8 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Monday nights at the Student Center Ballroom.

SGA meetings are open to anyone.

Students can propose projects or simply voice their opinions during the student forum.

4 Continuted from page 1 Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College his sophomore year.

He attended North View High School in Bratt, Florida, and was originally recruited to USA by Defensive Line Coach Brian Turner, but decided to stay a little closer to home.

“South is much bigger than I thought, having never visited and being so close to home, I figured it would be a much smaller college than it is,” Robinson said.

Robinson’s thoughts on living in the city of Mobile were generally positive.

“The food here is great, especially Cody’s Seafood down the street from campus. But if I could change anything or describe something not so great, it would definitely be the weather.”

Robinson said that after college, he would like to live would be Pensacola, Florida, but his second choice would definitely be Mobile.

Robinson said the people of Mobile are definitely his favorite part of the city.

Some of Robinson’s favorite things to do outside of school and football are hunting and fishing.

“I never miss the first day of the season,” Robinson said.

After college, Robinson plans to join the military as an officer and believes that a communication degree will present many opportunities for him.

Robinson said his favorite class at USA so far has been his argumentation class. He believes that it will help prepare him for his future career the most.

Robinson specifically names Turner, and Offensive Coordinator Bryant Vincent for recruiting him and encouraging him to come to USA. He also thanks Director of Operations Colin Hitschler for helping him so much since he has been here.

Robinson has been named by the coaching staff, as well as other related media, as a “safety to look out for” in the upcoming season. His talent has shined and his personality has meshed well with the team.

Good luck to Robinson and the rest of the team this Saturday against Mississippi State University. Go Jags!

Life Editor | Jason Ruffin jwr1321@jagmail.southalabama.edu Monday, Aug. 29 2016

LIFE

A story from the Louisiana flood

Louisiana residents gut the contents of their homes after the flood and leave it beside the street. Photo by Jason Ruffin.

By Jason Ruffin | Life Editor

Drywall, furniture and children’s toys lined the streets of Denham Springs, Louisiana, almost two weeks after it was enveloped by flood waters.

I had a chance to visit affected areas on Aug. 21.

I first stopped at an exit in Walker, Louisiana, before reaching the town of Denham Springs, Louisiana to visit some of the towns devastated by the flood. The Louisiana flood left thousands of residents homeless, and resulted in 13 deaths.

Nearly three days after the water receded, homeowners had already begun the painful process of stripping their houses bare.

“It’s nonstop, I mean you can’t stop, because if you stop then the mold’s going to take over,” Suzanne Hoover said, a single mother who had just closed on her home at the beginning of May. “I’ve been here for three months and then to see everything I worked for.”

Louisiana was still recovering from extreme violence after protests erupted following the death of Alton Sterling, and the subsequent police shootings that left three officers dead. But Hoover said that people were banding together in the face of disaster.

“We’ve got people going up and down the street carrying wagons of food, sandwiches and just doing what they can, you know to help out,” Hoover said.

Hoosver also said that the night of the flooding she, her son and an elderly

neighbor were forced to catch a ride on another neighbor’s boat out of her new subdivision. They stayed at a local shelter that night.

“They didn’t have enough food to eat and it’s not bad on the church, but it’s like if you were fixing dinner for your family and all of a sudden 300 people showed up,” Hoover said of the packed shelter that night. “It was just too many people, an influx of people for, you know they were not expecting that many.”

Hoover’s car, like many others around Baton Rouge, sat idle. A layer of mud caked the car, stopping at the top of the driver side window, marking how high the waters had risen in her garage.

Walking through Hoover’s home, I could see where the pile of debris in her front yard had come from.

Everything from the carpet to the walls had to be torn out. Her mother’s belongings that had been in her house had to be thrown away and left to sit in the sun until the insurance companies could appraise the damage.

Denham Spring’s top attraction, its antique district, was also hit hard by flooding. Shop owners were in cleanup mode as owners tried to salvage what they could.

Antique furniture owners sat by the road, much of it bowed and muddy.

Workers desperately tried to clean off what they could before moving it back into the shops, and hoping it would dry without bowing.

One owner said she had no plans to rebuild. The damage was just too severe.

Three of her shops were almost completely submerged. She still could not get the doors to one of them open.

She did not have flood insurance.

Police, with names from neighboring towns written on their cars, drove by every 10 to 15 minutes patrolling for looters.

One officer stopped to talk to a friend. He commented on how only a couple of days before, he was patrolling this area in a boat.

“I love my house, and I love the neighborhood. I don’t want to move, and I’m not going to. I’m going to sit here; I’m going to rebuild,” Hoover said of her future plans. “I’m strong. I’m not going to let it go, I can’t. I worked too hard.”

While in Walker, before I had driven through the neighborhoods and seen the gutted homes, I asked the family we met what they needed.

I started to grab for towels and anything else they pointed to, but their young son could not contain his excitement any longer.

“Do you have any toys?” he asked over and over again.

I handed him a large green dinosaur and a bag of toys in a muddy Wal-Mart parking lot.

He was happy; he wanted nothing else.

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LIFE

Monday, Aug. 29, 2016

Jeffrey Jay talks family life, being a transgender comedian in Texas

This is comedian Jeffrey Jay’s second time performing at USA. Photo by Jaccob Hearn

By Albert Terrt III| Reporter

Transgender comedian and activist Jeffrey Jay graced the University of South Alabama with a gut-busting performance of his award-winning standup comedy on Friday, Aug. 26.

Jay has been performing for about seven years. He was a finalist in the 2013 Funniest Comic in Texas, and has appeared in the Dallas Comedy Festival and on The Eye Opener morning show on the CW television network. Jay has also been called one of the “Top 7 Transgender Comedians” by The Advocate, a proLGBTQ magazine.

Jay bases his routine on his experiences growing up as a lesbian-woman-turnedgay-man in south Texas, having to “come out” multiple times to his supportive but sometimes confused parents, and having awkward conversations with his 8-yearold stepdaughter after she has spent time with less open-minded relatives. For an extra touch of uniqueness, Jay devotes part of his routine to an open Q&A session, challenging them to ask a question that he hasn’t heard before or that will offend him.

Jay sat down for an interview before the show Friday to talk more about his life, his comedy, his extended family here in Mobile, and why he loves to visit Mobile and USA. Jay, 29, grew up in Texas City, near Houston, Texas, and was born a girl named Courtney. Courtney was a teenager at a time when information on transgender people was virtually

nonexistent, yet one day she saw a documentary on PBS detailing the process of gender development in the womb and people who were born into the wrong gender. It was then that she realized that she was not a lesbian woman, as she had thought up to that point, but a straight man.

Jay now identifies as a gay man, a transition he attributes to his testosterone treatments. A question about his treatments in the Q&A section prompted Jay to explain that when people transitioning take testosterone or estrogen treatments, there is roughly a 50 percent chance they will “flip” and become attracted to their new sex. For him, this meant transitioning from a straight man to a gay man.

Jay began performing comedy in sports bars in Texas a few years after transitioning to male. This was still at a time when there was little knowledge about transgender people. He says there was some difficulty at first because no one knew “what he was” in terms of gender, but he never felt threatened due to one particular advantage.

“I have this added thing where I’m adorable so no one has ever tried to pick a fight with me,” Jay said. “Because who would punch this face? I just look like everyone’s little brother, or a cousin you’d love to have.”

The hardest part for Jay in the early days was the comedy itself, particularly the soul crushing experience of facing

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LIFE

Monday, Aug. 29, 2016

New year of USA theatre

Continuted from page 1

Muffet - the exact opposite of Heather Chandler.”

Lily Webb is a freshman theatre major who plays the part of Heather McNamara in the play.

“The musical is pretty fast moving since we have less than a month to prepare,” Webb said. “So far we’ve had the table-read of the script and we’re starting to hit pretty hard on music.”

The second show playing this fall will be “When Ya Comin’ Back, Red Ryder?” by Mark Medoff.

This is a straight-play, meaning that there are no musical numbers involved. It will be directed by Paul Hurley, assistant theatre instructor of acting and voice.

The play is set in New Mexico during the 1960s and tells the story of how customers and staff of a diner get “swept up in a maelstrom of violence, both physical and emotional,” as described by the USA theatre current season webpage.

OPEN 7AM-10PM M-S KITCHEN OPEN 8AM-6PM 5460 OLD SHELL ROAD

251-344-4575

“When Ya Comin’ Back, Red Ryder?” will be performed Nov. 11-13 and 17-19.

In the spring, USA theatre will also produce two more shows, “The Fabulous Fable Factory” by Joseph Robinette and “Thomas Tierney and A Flea in Her Ear” by George Feydeau, adapted by David Ives.

“The Fabulous Fable Factory” is a children’s musical production that stars a character named Monroe who happens upon a factory.

He finds the factory is meant to produce fables but that they are not made because the morals making section of the factory is broken.

“A Flea in Her Ear” is a comedic straight-play about a “comic romp” following around aristocrats and their servants with his “physical hijinks, chaos and mistaken identities,” as described by USA theatre.

Though these shows have not been cast or assigned yet, dates have been set for performance. “The Fabulous Fable Factory” will play Feb. 10-12, and 16-18.

In spring 2017, “A Flea in Her Ear” will play April 14-16 and 20-22.

Tatom described the selection process for the shows for the season.

“We go through a three-month long season selection process,” Tatum said.

“During the first month, students have the ability to propose shows that fit our established ‘season rotation’ for the coming year.

“After that first month, the selection committee, which includes a student rep, go through the nominated shows, using items like cast size, budget needs and design requirements, to finally select the next season,” Tatum continued.

“The program offers high quality productions, that serve both to entertain and educate,” Tatum said.

“A true liberal arts education, such as the excellent one we offer here at South should include the performing arts, and their unique way of looking at the human experience,” Tatum said.

“Both cast and crew put so much work into these productions, and the talent level is unreal,” Webb said. “The arts are so important, and we’d love the support.”

Jeffrey Jay answers a question from an audience member. Photo by Jaccob Hearn

Jeffrey Jay jokes about “trans-genda” Continuted from page 5 crowds of indifferent people and bombing repeatedly. Yet Jay says it’s possible to build yourself back up and become a positive person after overcoming the experience of . He feels lucky he honed his craft early and became a seasoned comedian that can use his comedy to contribute to the conversations on transgender identity taking place today.

“I started comedy when no one knew what ‘trans’ was, and now it’s so buzzworthy,” Jay said. “I’m now a very seasoned comedian who can do really great jokes about it because I started before it was okay… in sports bars in Texas… with cowboys yelling and baseball behind me and I just toughed it out until I was funny.”

It was clear that the audience at Friday’s show found Jay to be funny. He covered material on his young step-daughter not understanding how gay couples work, explaining his multiple gender and sexuality transitions to his parents, and the benefits of keeping a driver’s license identifying him as female.

The audience didn’t back down from the Jay’s challenge to ask something offensive during the Q&A either. One audience member suggested that Jay has “got to still think like a woman” because he was “all over the place.” Unfazed, Jay replied that he didn’t find this to be an insult.

“I think it’s a compliment to say I think like a woman because I’ve experienced both sides,” Jay said.

When asked if he had an agenda, as a transgender person, Jay replied, “Are you asking if we have a trans-genda?” He assured the audience member, “No, we just have to use the bathroom sometimes.

That’s it. We just have to pee.”

Jay loved the audience and enjoyed the show, which was his second performance at USA. Friday’s performance marked the first stop in a new tour and he was glad that this was his first stop.

“This was the perfect way to start this new tour,” he said. “This was the first stop on my trip. It couldn’t have been more perfect to start with South, with my family, with your awesome students and to go to a place where people think ‘Oh, it’s down south’ but to be met with so much love from your students. Thank you guys.”

Jay has many family members from Mobile, including former USA students and faculty, and says he basically grew up here. When asked if he would be willing to come to USA more than once per year, his answer was, “Hell yeah, I would! Anytime I would come back here, and also for the LGBT groups... I think it’s important. So hit me up!”

Yet, Jay has a full plate right now. In addition to his current tour, Jay continues to write for the Feast of Fun comedy podcast, he is working on a one-man show and he has some upcoming tour dates in Chicago, Illinois. He is also working on a documentary about growing up transgender in the South and the genderexclusive bathroom bills being passed in some southern states. The documentary will be released in the UK in October.

Jeffrey Jay is on the threshold of becoming a world-famous comedian with a prolific career. Hopefully that career will bring him to USA and the city of Mobile many more times in the future. Those who would like to learn more about Jeffrey Jay can visit his website at jeffreyjaycomedy. com.

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LIFE

Monday, Aug. 29, 2016

DO YOU WANT $28,000 TO SUPPORT YOUR GRADUATE DEGREE??

What will YOU do after you graduate?

These students have undergraduate `i}Àiià >Ì > ` ÃV i Vi wi `Ã] and now they are pursuing a Masters Degree in Mathematics and Science Education—funded through the University of South Alabama National Science Foundation Noyce Pathway to Mathematics and Science Grants.

YOU, TOO, could have your graduate program paid for!

If you will be graduating with a degree in a math or science related wi ` LÞ iVi LiÀ Óä£È] > ` Þ Õ think a career in teaching might be Þ ÕÀ vÕÌÕÀi] >ÌÌi ` Ì i ÌiÀiÃÌ iiÌ } / ÕÀÃ`>Þ] -i«Ìi LiÀ n] >Ì £\ää «° ° Ì i i}i v `ÕV>Ì ] 1 " ÎÓ{ä° For more information email Dr. Susan Ferguson Martin ferguson@southalabama.edu