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New LLC engages Western Campus students

Michelle Embleton

Beginning fall 2009, the Activism and Engaged Learning Living Learning Community (LLC) on Western Campus will be available to incoming first-year students and returning sophomores.

Open to 150 students who are struggling to choose a major that combines their diverse interests, the Activism and Engaged Learning LLC will be housed in Peabody Hall, according to Mary Jean Corbett, interim director of the Western College Program. Corbett said the idea of this new LLC came after the Western College Program closed in June 2008.

"Historically, Western students have been very actively involved in the community, politics, and making changes in the world," Corbett said. "The focus is on activism and engaged learning for students who don't just learn things, but also go out and do something about it."

Before its close, the Western College Program was geared towards students who wanted to merge different majors, and the new LLC will essentially be a smaller branch of Western that will focus on this same intermixing of interests and majors, Corbett said.

According to Corbett, the new LLC will emphasize the activism aspect so students are able to "get out of the classroom and into the world."

Corbett said one of the reasons activism will be stressed stems from the various activities that will be held next year on Western Campus to commemorate the Freedom Summer campaign of June 1964.

Freedom Summer, a campaign that attempted to register as many African American voters as possible in Mississippi, had a training site at the Western College for Women for people who planned on traveling to Mississippi as volunteers. Within 48 hours of their departure from Oxford to Mississippi, three of the volunteers were killed.

Beginning in fall 2009, Corbett said a range of activities and events will be held in honor of the volunteers of Freedom Summer and the new LLC will play a role in representing activism then and now.

"Why not take advantage of the coincidence of those events with the new activism LLC?" Corbett said.

Corbett said students in the LLC will not only be encouraged to participate in becoming actively involved and engaged in the community, but first-year students will be required to take specially redesigned sections of English 111 and 112 and History 112 with a focus on activism.

Corbett said the courses will cover a variety of historical activism, from the aftermath of the Civil War to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail."

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Sophomores who join the new LLC will also study interdisciplinary courses related to activism.

According to Corbett, sophomores will have the option to choose two courses, a seminar that will help select a major and a lecture-discussion course that will cover active social movements of the past.

First-year Jacqueline Lumadue, who resides in Peabody Hall, said she plans to pursue an international business major and art management minor. Lumadue is considering living on Western campus next year.

"Peabody is a little far from campus, (but) I figure aren't most dorms a little far?" Lumadue said. "I really like it enough that I would stay."

As an incoming first-year Lumadue signed up for the Courses in Common LLC and said she has really enjoyed living with other students who are taking similar classes.

"It's really nice to be with students who are interested in the same classes and majors," Lumadue said. "It really feels like we're our own community here. If I could get back in Peabody next year, I definitely would."