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First Year Seminar: Communications and Culture in Main South |
Interview with a Tim Dzurilla (Communication and Culture fifth-year program) and Rebecca Pollack '09
Why did you pick this particular first-year seminar?
Rebecca: What really interested me about the seminar was that it combined learning in the classroom with learning outside the classroom. This was actually the first course that I chose for college. When I signed up, I was hoping that it would be a nice transition into college precisely because it wasn’t a traditional class where you study everything from a textbook. Instead, it incorporated more things I was comfortable with, like working with kids from the neighborhood. As it turned out, the class was a lot of work and really challenging, but also so engaging that it was a great start to college.
Tell me about a typical class?
Rebecca: The class had two components—the in-class theoretical work and a field project. We met twice a week in class to discuss the basics of communication and culture and the theories behind it. For example, we studied advertising—examining some of the clues in both text and images—and examined all the same concepts that are covered in the regular Introduction to Communication and Culture course that is open to all Clark students. And then once a week we would meet with students from the University Park Campus School (UPCS) here in the neighborhood and work with them on ideas for the mainsouthspeaks.com Web site. So our class differed from the intro course in two important ways. Ours was a small seminar with only about 15 first year students in it, and it incorporated this field project on top of the regular theoretical work.
What’s mainsouthespeaks.com?
Rebecca: Tim had started mainsouthspeaks.com before the course and acted as our technical consultant.
Tim: During my senior year, I was interested in the digital divide in this neighborhood. I decided to focus my honors thesis in this area. I thought a good way to do some participatory research would be to set up my research site in the UPCS school. Out of that research, I found there was a disconnect about who was representing the neighborhood, both within the local media and online. I thought it would be great if there was a community Web site that really championed the area and was contributed to by people in the community. Toward the end of my senior year, I put up mainsouthspeaks.com but it was just a beginning of a site that could be so much more. Sarah, who was my thesis advisor, thought the site was a great idea and wanted to continue the process of developing content for it. So we thought developing content for the site through her first year seminar would be a great way to introduce freshman to people in the community and really generate some great conversations.
Rebecca: Our role was to work with together with the UPCS students to come up with content. We’d tell Tim, 'Here’s what we want,' and he would put it on the site. It would show up on the site all of a sudden and we’d all say ‘Oh, look. I worked on that!’ It was really exciting. And the UPCS students loved it too.
Tim: Once we had all the new content incorporated into the site, we had a big launch party where everyone got to showcase their talent. We had food and prizes. Three girls came up with a step dance, and one of the boys sang. We didn’t want it to just be an online activity. We wanted to connect this project back to the community.
Rebecca: Yeah. We really wanted to bring the community together. That was the whole purpose of the Web site—to connect the community and show them what’s going on in their neighborhood. It wasn’t just an online thing, but a resource for community members—to react to and to use to bring ideas back into the community.
What role did the UPCS students play in the site?
Rebecca: We worked with the students each week for three hours, discussing what they wanted to see, what they thought would be good for the site and, what their families wanted to see. We split into different groups, each with Clark students and UPCS students. We had groups like the art group, the public relations group, the business group, the launch party planning group. For example, the art group went out and took pictures of the neighborhood for the site. And the business group went out and talked to local businesses about their needs for the site. Everyone really played a part to bring the site together. Then the actual writing was done collaboratively by Clark and UPCS students.
What kind of information did the UPCS students say they wanted on the site?
Rebecca: Originally, the kids wanted fun things like games and chat rooms, but we set some limitations. We agreed on restaurant reviews and arts to begin with.
Tim: Actually, the arts section ended up becoming kind of controversial because the students had a different idea about what pubic art was than some of their neighbors. The idea of graffiti as art was debated, and we ended up posting pictures of graffiti which received a lot of interest and response from community members not involved in the project. Some people felt that it was an appropriate portrayal of the neighborhood. Others felt that if we were trying to show the positive aspects of the neighborhood, we were sending some mixed messages because defacing property is not necessarily a good thing. So this issue ended up being a little controversial. It goes back to the question of how we wanted to represent the area. Are we trying to improve the image of it, but do it in such a way that is not truly representative?
How would you say the content on mainsouthspeaks.com has progressed?
Rebecca: The site has really evolved. Now we have a government perspective section addressing come controversial issues. For example, one of the girls in the class made a documentary called “Talking Trash” that examines garbage issues in the neighborhood. We’ve taken the site to a new level.
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