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Culture

CULTURE

Miami at home: Remote Learning—It Takes a Village

By Abigail Kemper | April 18, 2020

  Ron Becker has taught Media and Culture 143 for probably 14 years. “Probably” being his word. The class is a lecture style in Laws Hall 100, one isolated lecture hall that always confuses students on the first day. To make the class more interactive, he enlists a group of 8-10 of his previous students to lead small groups for class credits and become Undergraduate Associates (UAs).  When the coronavirus emails flooded our phones, the UA team felt flutters of anxiety about the upcoming small group. We started to feel the same frustration and confusion as our professors, but we also felt the stress of being students. 

CULTURE

Miami at home: Shrinking the distance, one drive at a time

By Sam Cioffi | April 18, 2020

  I turned the key, and my car purred to life. It had been a little more than a week since I had  left my house, let alone driven. The headlights illuminated the small forest of trees in my backyard.  I connected my phone to the speaker and glanced over at my 17-year-old brother, John, in the passenger seat.  We needed to escape our parents just for the night. 

CULTURE

Electronic empathy: teaching through a screen

By Duard Headley | April 17, 2020

On Tuesday, March 10, Miami students were informed via an email from President Greg Crawford that classes would be moving online for the rest of the semester.  Shortly before that, that same news found its way to the ears of the university’s many professors telling them to prepare to move classes online. 

CULTURE

Creativity City -- Population: The Internet

By Maya Fenter | April 16, 2020

For the past three years, Miami’s World Creativity and Innovation Week (WCIW) organization has built Creativity City on the front lawn of the Farmer School of Business. Last year, each exhibit or “property” was marked by a set of backdrops designed to look like the brick exteriors of campus buildings. Properties featured different student organizations and activities to exercise creative thinking. There was even a pedal wagon making rounds on the streets of campus and Oxford. 

CULTURE

Dealing with the cards you're dealt

By Lexi Whitehead | April 16, 2020

  While quarantined, many students have taken to their Instagram stories, posting bingo cards, motivational quotes and songs they’re listening to. Junior marketing and entrepreneurship major Sam Christie had a different idea.  A lover of all sorts of games, Christie started having regular game nights with his friends earlier this semester. When he had to go back to his hometown of Brentwood, Tennessee, he was disappointed he wouldn’t be able to continue the game nights, especially the one he had planned for his birthday.

CULTURE

A comprehensive quarantine streaming guide — Part two

By Kirby Davis | April 15, 2020

I took some time out of my very busy schedule (of WebExing into classes for two hours a week and trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my time) to compile all of the quality films streaming on Amazon Prime, HBO Go, Hulu and Netflix right now. The Student will be releasing my recommendations in weekly installments until the end of the semester. This week, we have true-crime documentaries, fun documentaries and dramas for you.

CULTURE

New kids on the block, theatre style

By Michael Smith | April 9, 2020

Producing theater is no cheap or easy feat, but that didn’t stop five Miami University students from teaming up last fall to launch a new theater company in Oxford. New Wave Theatre Company is an entirely student-run theatrical production group adjacent to Miami. Established in the fall of 2019, the group's mission is to produce a series of student-written and student-produced shows each year, with the goal of championing new works and new voices among the Miami community. 

CULTURE

Revisiting Club Penguin: a virtual world virtually unchanged

By Emily Dattilo | April 8, 2020

  It’s a Saturday, early evening, and if not for social distancing and the events of the past few weeks, many people would be enjoying parties at their respective colleges or towns.  But because that’s not within the realm of possibility right now, people will take the next best thing.  Cue Club Penguin Rewritten, a replication of a childhood classic, which comfortingly enough, looks just like it did when we left it back in 2010. 

CULTURE

The silver lining of remote living

By Mia Lee | April 5, 2020

 In the midst of the novel coronavirus pandemic, many are left wondering what’s going to happen next. However, some in the Oxford community have decided to take a different route. Spreading smiles instead of germs, Miami University students are using this pandemic as an opportunity to be creative and look into different hobbies for the remainder of the remote semester. 

CULTURE

Notes of nostalgia: From campus to quarantine

By David Kwiatkowski and Jenna Calderón | April 3, 2020

When I came to college, I thought I was an adult.  I thought, as most of us probably did, I had it all figured out. Though I was only 17, I was on my own, free from my parents’ roof.  I lived in Hepburn Hall during my first year, and while it was nice, I longed for the day I’d be able to live off campus, avoiding sticky dining hall tables and crowded dorms with communal bathrooms.

Recently elected city councilperson Amber Franklin has led the charge to add a social worker to OPD.
CULTURE

OPD on GBD: policing a ghost town

By Emily Dattilo | March 25, 2020

Even before the stay-at-home order, on GBD last week, uptown was quiet. There were no lines stretching out of Brick Street Bar & Grill. There were no queues spilling out of Bagel & Deli. There were parking spots available. Sidewalks were nearly empty.

CULTURE

It's a beautiful bidet in the neighborhood

By Jenna Calderón | March 17, 2020

The bathrooms of college students can be downright gross.  Toothpaste lines the bowl of the sink, the trashcan overflows and the toilet paper roll is notoriously empty. But, at the very least, Miami University sophomore Seif Boulos can fix that last problem.

CULTURE

Silence on the sidewalk

By David Kwiatkowski , Will Gorman and Emily Dattilo | March 17, 2020

Some stories delve deeply into the lives of their subjects. Others seek to capture the human condition in just a few words. Modeled after journalist Brady Dennis’ 300 word stories that explore the unfiltered intimacy of the everyday, these pieces offer a glimpse into the untold experiences of college life. 

CULTURE

‘Heavy metal will never die’: Community for Miami metalheads

By Lexi Whitehead | March 17, 2020

  In a classroom on the second floor of Upham Hall sit 10 students. They drum their fingers on desks, bob their heads and tap their feet while the song “Heading Out to the Highway” by Judas Priest plays. Instead of the regular sounds of muted lectures and shuffling students, the raw chords of the song reverberate throughout Upham’s hallways. At the front of the room, the music video dances across the whiteboard.  This is what a meeting looks like for Miami’s heavy metal club known as the Newly Woken Organization Based on Heavy Metal (NWOBHM). The name is a nod to certain metal subgenres like NWOTHM (New Wave of Traditional Heavy Metal).

CULTURE

Notes of Nostalgia: a different kind of commencement

By Erin Glynn | March 17, 2020

  I’ve always loved a ritual. Proms, bat mitzvahs, confirmations, swearing-in ceremonies, quinceañeras, masses, weddings, funerals. And graduations.  Rituals help us take what is ordinary, what is necessary, and transform it into an event. A moment that helps us step out of our everyday selves to recognize that the momentous has happened. Now, it looks like the chance to pause and feel how momentous graduating is might be taken away.

CULTURE

Notes of nostalgia: the times are a-changing, but that’s okay

By Rachel Berry | March 17, 2020

  Going off to college, my soon-to-be roommate was texting me, excitedly talking about future plans and how she couldn’t wait to get to Miami. It seemed like all my friends from home were the same way, counting down the days until they would leave for school.  I was the complete opposite. I was terrified to leave the only place I had ever known to move 300 miles away and live with complete strangers. When my parents left me, I cried the entire walk from their car back to my dorm, before wiping my eyes and trying to pull myself together as I met the people I would be living with for the next year.

CULTURE

Mutts can go a little nuts, as a treat

By Owen Berg | March 10, 2020

After a brief introduction, four dogs ran out onstage to blaring rock music, taking their places on four wooden crates in a line upstage.  Dog-loving families had packed the seats of Hall Auditorium to see Mutts Gone Nuts, a traveling comedy dog show, at 7:30 p.m. last Friday. Founder Scott Houghton entered in a red velvet blazer, introducing the dogs to the audience. Their lead trainer, Samantha Valle, stood behind the mutts, directing the tricks and sneaking them treats from her pocket.

CULTURE

Theatre production to build community around women, politics and soccer

By Michael Smith | March 10, 2020

 “The Wolves,” a one-act play by Sarah DeLappe, follows a girls indoor soccer team as they warm up before their game each week. The nine girls slide tackle big political questions and social topics with the energy and awareness of high school students. The cast consists of ten women: nine teammates identified by their jersey numbers and a soccer mom played by professor and Chair of Theatre department Julia Guichard.  

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