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(03/18/09 5:42am)
Human history is as much a product of forgetting as it is of remembering. What actually goes down in the pages of history can be unpredictable and seemingly arbitrary. Listen to Beethoven’s famed Sonata No. 9 in A Major, Op. 47, commonly called the Kreutzer Sonata after the French violinist Rodolphe Kreutzer. It is sometimes assumed that Beethoven originally dedicated the sonata to Kreutzer. In reality, Kreutzer never could perform the sonata. Instead, he reportedly told Beethoven the piece was “impossible to play” — a notable complaint, given that Kreutzer was considered one of Europe’s top violinists at the time.But it was not impossible. By this time, Afro-European violinist George Polgreen Bridgetower had already played the sonata, said Creative Writing Prof. Rita Dove, who recently wrote a book about the musician. Bridgetower was a Mulatto violin virtuoso. His musical talent was so impressive that Beethoven originally wrote the piece for him, not Kreutzer, Dove said. Why, then, did Beethoven rededicate the sonata to Kreutzer, a violinist who refused to play it? Also, why did history subsequently forget George Polgreen Bridgetower?Dove, a former U.S. Poet Laureate, said she aims to recover Bridgetower’s lost significance in her latest book of poetry. “Sonata Mulattica” dramatizes in lyric verse the life of the violinist and the different factors that led him to historical obscurity rather than fame. “I wanted to discover [Bridgetower], Dove said, “and poetry was the way I wanted to discover him.”In a joint concert with Dave Matthews Band violinist Boyd Tinsley, Dove will celebrate the release of “Sonata Mulattica” Friday evening as part of the 15th Annual Virginia Festival of the Book. The blending of poetry, music and conversation will begin at 8 p.m. in the Paramount Theater.“[When] Dove mentioned that Boyd Tinsley was cited in one of her poems ... we all agreed that it would be fantastic if there could be a joint program,” said Nancy Damon, program director of the Virginia Festival of the Book. Kevin McFadden, the festival’s associate director and a former University student, said he felt that there would be “large interest” in the program, and eventually the festival invited Dove and Tinsley to perform together at the Paramount. Dove used Tinsley’s name in her poem, “The Bridgetower,” describing him as one of today’s gifted people forgotten by time. She said she contacted him after finishing writing “Sonata Mulattica” to let him know he was featured in it.Dove and Tinsley enjoyed working together on the upcoming event, Dove said. “He works similarly [as] I do ... on improvisation,” Dove said, adding that both are artists who experiment with their craft to expand its scope and range of expression. Combining the two crafts of poetry and violin music to share one message is in itself a chance for improvisation.“It’s been a great process of getting to know one another,” Dove said of her collaboration with Tinsley, who, like Dove, is a Charlottesville resident. Dove added that Tinsley wants people to remember what happened between Beethoven and Bridgetower in 1803. Both Tinsley and her aim to “connect the dots from Bridgetower all the way up to Tinsley,” Dove said.Damon said she anticipates that the event will be “a very exciting combination of words and music which fits perfectly into [the festival’s] goal of encouraging people to read.” She added that “with any success, the story contained in Dove’s book and Tinsley’s music — the life of George Polgreen Bridgetower — will encourage people to explore what they read more deeply, to examine the personal significance every story offers them.”Dove said her initial decision to versify Bridgetower’s 200-year-old story happened largely by chance. As a former cellist, she heard Bridgetower’s name long ago but did not give it much thought. That changed years later when she glimpsed a portrayal of Bridgewater’s genius in the 1994 film, “Immortal Beloved.”By the age of 10, Bridgewater, already a prodigy, was on the road performing.“That was really interesting — a little boy, half-black and half-white, playing in concert halls across Europe,” she said. As a young man, Bridgetower came to Vienna, where he impressed and befriended the already legendary Ludwig van Beethoven. The friendship, however, was short-lived.“The Bridgetower,” which was printed last November in the New Yorker, explains why: In May 1803, Beethoven and his new friend first performed their new sonata together with the German on pianoforte and the Afro-European on violin. The performance moved the composer so deeply that he “leapt up to embrace his ‘lunatic mulatto,’ the playful nickname he had given Bridgetower.“[But then they had a] falling out over a girl nobody remembers, nobody knows.”Bridgetower apparently insulted a woman who was one of Beethoven’s acquaintances. In response, the composer chose to dedicate the sonata to another musician. The pair would never renew the friendship.How might racial categorization both in and beyond classical music be different if Bridgetower’s fame had survived the first round of history’s cuts? How many more figures like Bridgetower might there be today if their names were better remembered? His own mulatto identity literally bridged African and European cultures, and his technical abilities surpassed even those of the famous Kreutzer. Beethoven’s sole reason for renouncing Bridgetower had nothing to do with music and everything to do with emotion. But because of a chance combination of factors, Bridgetower “has kind of dropped out of history,” Dove said. Remembered here and there, maybe, but more as an interesting detail than as anyone historically influential, she added.For Dove, obscure stories like Bridgetower’s history point out the shortcomings of history and the need for something beyond it that can be used to remember human life. Around every famous historical figure, there are countless other people — “living, breathing people,” Dove said — who were just as significant. Perhaps these nameless contributors would be the ones in history books instead if a few circumstances had worked out differently.For those select few that history does remember, it seems to do so incompletely, which offers the world only small, scattered windows into past lives as vibrant as the ones that people are living now, Dove noted.“What has always fascinated me [is] the realization that we all have interior lives,” Dove said. “What history does is to point out, rather graphically, just how little of that interiority can be passed down through generations.”This is one of Dove’s main reasons for writing poetry, she said. She aims to acknowledge and explore that interiority with the intent to expose the personal, emotional side of history.“History ... tells us what happened. It doesn’t tell us why it was worth it,” Dove said. “That’s the job of poetry.”
(01/28/09 5:20am)
Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist Pat Oliphant poised his hand briefly over the blank sheet, fingers dexterous with the ink they held. The hand descended, and an image whimsically sprouted: a smudge here, several strokes there and Sarah Palin’s grinning face materialized. A few more swipes produced a huge moose looming behind her. The audience guffawed and applauded simultaneously.The camera trained upon Oliphant’s drawing sheet allowed the packed room of onlookers to watch every flick of the artist’s wrist on a large viewing screen. Seeing Oliphant draw was essential to this event — “A Conversation with Pat Oliphant” — because Oliphant’s dialogue takes place as much on paper as it does in speech. The world-renowned cartoonist held two such conversations during his visit last week to the University: one Thursday at the Miller Center of Public Affairs, and the other Friday at the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library. In both locations, audience members filled the rooms and spilled out into the adjacent lobby. At the Miller Center, George Gilliam, assistant director for public programs and Forum Program chair, directed the conversation with Oliphant; at the Special Collections Library, painter William Dunlap and satirist P.J. O’Rourke led the discussion.Oliphant’s visit kicked off the opening of an exhibit at the University of Virginia Art Museum called “Leadership: Oliphant Cartoons and Sculpture from the Bush Years.” The show features roughly 100 of Oliphant’s satirical drawings, caricatures and sculptures. Alongside his work stands “With the Line of Daumier,” an exhibition of lithographs, paintings and drawings by the 19th-century French artist whom Oliphant cites as one of his heaviest influences.Oliphant has been drawing since the 1950s, and his cartoons — now the most widely syndicated in the world — have won him not only a Pulitzer but numerous other journalism awards. The New York Times has labeled him “the most influential cartoonist now working.”His now-famous drawings, however, began on the other side of the world.Oliphant is an American, but not by birth. He was born and raised in Adelaide, Australia, which he called “a pleasant-enough place to be.” After school, Oliphant began working as a copyboy for the Adelaide News.“I’ve always liked to draw [but] I didn’t think you could make a living at it,” he said in an interview.Eventually, however, staff members noticed his creative talent, and he was hired as the paper’s cartoonist.Oliphant moved to the United States to further his cartooning career in 1964 — an opportune time for budding political cartoonists, he said.“Everything was happening: civil rights, Vietnam ... everything was heating up,” Oliphant said. “The country was beautifully polarized.”Oliphant began working at the Denver Post, and his cartoons proved very successful — in 1967, he won a Pulitzer for editorial cartooning.Oliphant did not gain such success by staying safely within political and social boundaries, Gilliam noted, saying Oliphant has “walked so close to the line that he got some chalk dust on his shoes.”Take, for example, the cartoon Oliphant drew several years ago called “Running of the Altar Boys.” Around the time of the running of the bulls in Spain, and in response to charges against Catholic priests of child molestation, Oliphant drew a stampede of Catholic priests chasing eagerly after frightened, fleeing altar boys.Another controversial cartoon, “Dominatrix,” appeared during the scandals about prison torture in Iraq. Condoleezza Rice, towering menacingly in a solid black jumpsuit and brandishing a whip, challenges the reader: “The United States doesn’t do torture! Do I make myself clear?”When Gilliam asked Oliphant how he produces such blazing opinions, Oliphant said it is a cartoonist’s job to express forceful opinions.“You have to bring yourself to a boil every day,” he said.In drawing controversial cartoons, Oliphant has encountered criticism from the public and his editors but he said he will not change a cartoon in response to public disapproval.“If [publishers] don’t want to run [my cartoon],” the choice is theirs, he said.Fifty years ago that same defiance led Oliphant to create one of his cartoon trademarks: the miniscule penguin “Punk,” who usually offers witty commentary on Oliphant’s drawings from a corner of the cartoon box. Oliphant said he created Punk when he felt stifled by the staff of a conservative newspaper he once worked for.Punk’s pithy witticisms seem to resemble the ones Oliphant himself peppers real conversation with, and Oliphant acknowledged a bond between himself and the tiny ink figure he created.When an audience member at the Miller Center questioned him about Punk, Oliphant replied, “I invented him or he invented me. He’s been with me ever since.”Punk did not make an appearance to University audiences; Oliphant limited his cartooning “conversations” in Charlottesville to quick caricatures of presidents and politicians: Nixon’s brooding, Macbeth-ish glare; Jimmy Carter shadowed by his legendary killer bunny; Blagojevich’s enormous hairdo. Audience members applauded with each drawing he produced. Wilson McIvor, a Charlottesville resident who attended Friday’s presentation, said he enjoyed watching Oliphant draw. “I was very impressed with his talent and his ability to capture a character with just a few lines ... and the ability to do that impromptu in front of an audience like this,” McIvor said. “That talent has always amazed me.”Although McIvor admired Oliphant’s improvised drawings, he said he could not choose a favorite. McIvor said his overall favorite of Oliphant’s cartoons is a recent image depicting former President George W. Bush riding into the sunset with a massive shadow behind him labeled “legacy.”With a new president comes new fodder for cartooning. When Oliphant began to draw President Obama’s caricature, the crowd fell silent, then broke into laughter when Oliphant said, “thank God for the ears” and drew them enormously out of proportion.Oliphant said he will miss the Bush presidency because of all the villains it allowed him to draw.“Now they’re giving me this guy [named Obama] I might like,” he said. “I’ve never liked a president. It’s not my business.”
(11/07/08 5:58am)
In the University’s ever-bustling community of student-self governance, the latest flurry of activity concerns student leadership within the classroom. Because of efforts by the Student Council’s Academic Affairs Committee, students have the opportunity to submit proposals for courses to be added to the Course Offering Directory. In the words of Marisa Roman, fourth-year College student and Academic Affairs co-chair, “The student-initiated course [is] a greater representation of student governance ... [granting students] the authority to dictate what they want to learn ... and expand their horizons to the greatest extent possible.” But why the need for student-created courses?“We felt as though there were a lot of courses out there that weren’t ... serving [students’] learning needs or desires,” Roman said. Matt Fifer, fourth-year Engineering student and Academic Affairs co-chair, said student-initiated courses provide students with the means and funding “to take their ideas and turn them into tangible solutions.” Though the program just recently has come into the spotlight, it is not new; before this semester it existed for several years but with so little publicity and support that Roman called it “just a little tidbit in the [College of] Arts & Sciences.” At least one early student-founded course proved successful, though. Many people have heard of the University’s popular LASE 360, “The Best of U.Va.: A Collection of Unforgettable Lectures” but do not realize that it was started by a student. According to “E-News Online,” a University Engineering news source, Emily Ewell, a 2007 chemical engineering graduate, came up with the idea for Unforgettable Lectures when considering how many students missed out on great lectures that were unrelated to their majors. With the support of Biology associate professor Barry Condron, Ewell’s proposal for the course was accepted and quickly filled by students. The course still runs today under Condron’s supervision and is widely sought after by University students.In general, however, the early student-initiated course program proved difficult to navigate, mainly because it did not offer any funding for the classes. This left course proposers on their own to find a faculty sponsor. “You can’t really expect faculty members to completely volunteer their time [for] one- to three-credit classes,” Fifer said.When Fifer joined the Academic Affairs Committee in 2006, the co-chairs, then-second-year College students A.J. Frey and Kathryn Serra, began discussing ideas for revamping the program to make it more usable for students. Similar programs were already solidly in place at other schools like Stanford and Berkeley, and Frey and Serra “tossed the idea around a little bit” and consulted Assoc. Dean for Undergraduate Studies Gordon Stewart about it, Fifer said. The program began to gain momentum when Fifer and Roman became co-chairs last year. They started talking with the vice provost about possibilities and posted a preliminary application to the Student Council Web site, Fifer said. Finally, Roman and Fifer succeeded in acquiring enough funding for the program: They received roughly $1,000 from Student Council and garnered about $5,000 total for the program. Help from the Student Council would not be possible without the aid of the University Bookstore, Fifer said.“The bookstore is basically paying for this initiative,” he said.Student-initiated courses are costly endeavors, and the creation process demands committed students. The application process works in a “two-fold manner,” Roman said. Students must complete the form posted online and must also submit a statement of what makes their topic relevant and a detailed syllabus. Then they must obtain the signature and approval of a faculty member “who can assume the necessary role... as if he or she were teaching the course.”The signature does not mean that the faculty member will be the primary teacher, however. In some cases his or her only function is to fulfill administrative tasks, monitor attendance and provide outside support if needed — an example is the role of Condron in the Unforgettable Lecture series.The first official recipient of the co-chairs’ approval, selected for the current fall semester, was a course titled “Global Development in Practice,” INST 150. Led by fourth-year Biomedical Engineering student Shokoufeh Dianat and third-year College student Meredyth Gilmore, the course aims to help first- and second-year students explore different issues in global development and “what students at U.Va. have done before that they can learn from,” Dianat said.Dianat and other students had worked on development projects abroad, she said, but had not seen support for similar efforts at the University.“We wanted to create some student-to-student venue ... for underclassmen to learn how they can get involved ... and whether they should get involved,” she said. The two-credit course meets every Wednesday evening and is led by one of the 10 course moderators, all of whom are students with extensive experience in global development studies. Environmental Sciences Professor Robert J. Swap, the professor supporting and supervising the course, said he accepted the students’ request for his guidance because he knew and respected Dianat and Gilmore. “The bottom line is that they’ve done good work,” he said, noting he wanted to “honor their efforts.”When asked about the value of student-instructed courses on topics of field research, Swap said “students speaking to students comes across as authentic.” “It’s a fellow learner’s voice ... having gone through [the experience] before ... [and] I think that students can better relate to what other students are capable of doing,” he said. “There’s a sense of empowerment [that] goes both ways.” After every class, Dianat said, instructors pass out evaluation sheets for students to assess the effectiveness of that week’s selected lecture, reading and class discussion.“The really cool thing is that a lot of the students want to continue this course and become instructors for next year,” she added. With the encouragement of the first course’s success, Roman and Fifer have already finished the initial application phase for spring 2009 courses, Fifer said. Roman added that the committee hopes to expand the program to offer three student-led courses. One has already been selected, a course on Turkish culture proposed by third-year College student Sena Aydin. Though the problem of funding the courses has been temporarily resolved, Fifer said, “I don’t think the [current] status of the funding ... is something we’d want to continue forever.”Fifer said he hopes to expand the program’s current partnerships with organizations like the Arts & Sciences Council, which has contributed roughly $7,000 for the program’s book fees.Arts & Sciences Council President Lindsey Turner said the Council is “very supportive. We like the idea and hope the program continues.”
(10/17/08 8:47am)
Whoever you are, scanning these lines, you have secrets — experiences, facts about yourself and opinions you would never share openly with other humans.But what if you could share your secrets with a complete stranger? Countless people already have, with a stranger by the name of Frank Warren. Warren is the founder of PostSecret — a community art project that allows anyone from anywhere to send him an anonymous postcard displaying a personal secret. For many, part of the project’s appeal lies in its anonymity and the lack of a previous connection with Warren.“I guess [what makes PostSecret unique] is the fact that people trust him so much ... that they would share their secrets with a stranger,” fourth-year College student Vennesa Yung said.Warren visited the University Oct. 7 to share the story and meaning behind PostSecret to a packed audience and camera crew from “The Today Show” in Old Cabell Hall. His introduction? “Hi. My name is Frank, and I collect secrets.”The project started small, Warren told the audience. In 2004, he began handing strangers in Washington, D.C. blank postcards addressed to his home in Germantown, Md. bearing the message: “You are invited to anonymously contribute a secret to a group art project.” The only requirements were that secrets must be true and not previously shared with anyone. Postcard recipients’ actions varied, he said, though the most common response was, “I don’t have any secrets.” (Those people have the best ones of all, he said.) Despite initial skepticism toward the project, Warren said postcards slowly began to trickle in. They kept coming as months passed, and the trickle became a stream. Now, four years later, the world drops about 200 of its secrets in his mailbox every day — meaning roughly 1,000 secrets per week. Needless to say, he has stopped handing out postcards. They pour in of their own accord from nearby neighborhoods and overseas countries.“I had accidentally tapped into something full of mystery and wonder that I didn’t fully understand,” Warren said. “The project took on a life of its own.” Warren said HarperCollins eventually requested to publish a book with him about the postcards, which was released in 2005. The success of the first book led to three more. PostSecret’s fame even spread to the music industry, when a band named The All-American Rejects featured some of the postcards in the music video for their 2005 hit, “Dirty Little Secret.”The project’s popularity demonstrates Warren is not alone in his fascination with secrets. But why the fascination? What attracts people to this anonymous exposure of hidden thoughts? Warren explained that secrets are not shared often enough in everyday life, and their repression creates barriers between people and feelings of loneliness and frustration. “Sometimes when we’re keeping a secret, that secret is keeping us ... in ways we don’t recognize ... that affect our lives and others,” he said. When people carry secrets their whole lives, he said, “I think it’s tragic.” Warren said he began collecting and sharing secrets to foster a sense of community — connections based not on geography but on “minds and hearts.” Warren, too, has been deeply impacted by the project. He said he feels privileged to receive each secret as “an amazing glimpse through a 6-inch by 4-inch window into someone’s heart,” and noted that each glimpse has further helped him see “the frailty and heroism in so many of our lives that goes on just below the surface.” Each secret is particularly important as a unique work of art, he added. PostSecret’s loose guidelines encourage creativity. Some secrets venture beyond the postcard form and have arrived at Warren’s house on X-rays, fruits and vegetables, a Rubik’s Cube — even a one-pound bag of coffee, he said.The secrets vary as widely as the mail that bears them.“You can see the full range of human emotions in [them],” Warren said — everything from comic jests to deeply troubling burdens. He added that he notices “patterns and trends” within that variety and said many of the secrets deal with “loneliness and eating disorders and self-harm and suicide.”Warren said he feels particularly strong about using PostSecret to advocate suicide prevention through both the direct sharing of painful secrets and the support of suicide prevention organizations. One of Warren’s friends founded a suicide prevention hotline, and when it fell in desperate need of funds, Warren posted a request on his blog. PostSecret followers answered it with a total of $30,000 for the hotline.Yung said she was impressed by Warren’s use of the blog community to raise funds for suicide prevention.“That’s really meaningful,” she said.But this information was not new to Yung, who said she already had visited Warren’s blog — which he updates every Sunday with about 20 fresh secrets — and has read one of his books. For audience members like Yung, Warren still offered new material by showing a string postcards banned from publication, largely for copyrighting reasons.“I thought that part was funny,” Yung said.At the end of his talk, Warren asked listeners to share some of their own secrets live, an invitation he offers at every college he visits. “The Today Show” crew stopped filming and many people stepped forward to speak their secrets into the microphones scattered through the room.Third-year Commerce student Laura Albero — a member of the University Programs Council’s Arts & Enrichment Committee and the program coordinator for Warren’s talk at the University — said she “was very moved” by some of the secrets unveiled that evening. She added that Warren was very specific about how the room’s lighting should appear for this part.“He likes to have the house lights come down so it’s a little darker and people are in shadow ... so they’re more comfortable when sharing secrets,” she said.As program director, Albero spent Oct. 7 showing Warren around Grounds and answering his questions about the University.“He was really excited about the secret societies and kept asking questions about the Imps and the Zs and the Sevens,” she said.He may not have discovered much about the societies, but Warren witnessed a great deal of personal secrets revealed that night and said he felt encouraged by the “warm, empathetic way” in which students and community members opened up to each other during the presentation.When asked about future plans for the PostSecret project, Warren could not say where it was going. To this day he still reads and saves every postcard sent to his home in Maryland, but Warren merely considers himself one of PostSecret’s many followers, rather than its leader. He said he hopes PostSecret inspires future movements that foster community and understanding among people.“I hope we all have the ability to share our secrets in a way that helps ourselves and others,” he said.
(10/07/08 5:52am)
Try to imagine a Cavalier football game without its marching band. Cav Man demolishes his computer-animated enemy and gallops the field in triumph, cheerleaders back-flip and somersault, football players charge through smoke to a roaring crowd. But where is the “Good Ol’ Song?” The energizing rally tunes? The glory? Still present, perhaps, but less palpable without the boom of Cavalier brass and drums. It may be difficult for today’s undergraduates to imagine any band routine other than the ranks of caped and feather-capped musicians weaving intricate formations across the field. But the Cavalier Marching Band is young — this year marks only its fifth anniversary.The original athletic band started in the 1920s and later closed because of difficulties in 1962, according to the band’s Web site. Its place was filled by a student pep band from 1969 until 2003, when a $1.5 million donation from Carl and Hunter Smith allowed for the revival of the official marching band under Director of Bands William Pease.The new band’s inception did not escape controversy: The pep band it unseated had been in place for more than three decades, and some University students were upset when the pep band lost the right to play at games once the marching band stepped in. Pease himself said one of the most common questions he was asked in early press interviews was how he felt about the replacement. His response today remains what it was then: “I was just hired to put a marching band together ... [and didn’t] make the decision.” His feelings toward the Pep Band? “I support students,” he said. “Anybody that provides services to the school ... whether they are choral kids or string kids or band kids ... you hope they do well.”Since the inception of the marching band, the pep band has continued to perform at a host of community and club sporting events, and pep band member Ellen Reifler noted that the pep band is trying to initiate communication with the athletic department to reach an agreement about being allowed to play at various events.For now, though, music at football games is provided by the Cavalier Marching Band, which made its debut Sept. 11, 2004, when Pease introduced the band at a packed home game. He called his experiences during the past five years “amazing,” attributing the band’s success not to his own leadership, but the band’s overall cohesiveness.“It’s not really about one person,” he said, noting that the band is a team effort with many people involved.By “a lot of people,” Pease meant 260 student members, both musicians and others, who collaborate with the band’s professional supervisors and adult volunteers. He said that number has grown more than he expected, noting the band is probably close to its maximum possible size.Assoc. Director of Bands Andrew Koch handles the logistics of moving the hundreds of students and their instruments in unison over a confined space. He said the band is currently “making provisions” to accommodate its rapid expansion. Band members themselves must practice rigorously to ensure that Koch’s logistics flow smoothly at every home and away game, every pre-game and halftime show. A week before Move-In Day every August, Koch said, the band leaps into the new game season with three rehearsals a day, Saturday through Friday.Third-year College student Katie Croghan, who plays clarinet, said once school starts, musicians commit to rehearsing three times a week before home performances and twice a week before away performances. Add to those rehearsals the actual game days and the long hours of traveling to away games, and the sacrifice of time and energy required of band participants becomes evident.Drumline instructor Patrick Zampetti finds the commitment inspiring. “It’s really refreshing ... to see the enthusiasm that goes into even rehearsals,” he said.He added that drumline members must put in their own additional practice time. “Keeping time is the heart and soul of the band,” he said, and requires a high level of dedication from every drummer.But Croghan, Koch, Pease and Zampetti all emphasized the fulfillment that accompanies such a time commitment. Band membership is voluntary; Koch said it is not a requirement for music majors, nor does it satisfy music majors’ ensemble requirement.The marching band counts as a two-credit elective course of which students deliberately choose to be a part. “It’s different when you’re doing it because you have to,” Koch said of past band experiences at other colleges. But here, members are doing it “strictly for the love of ... band and camaraderie,” he said.Croghan, too, affirmed that the band is fueled by motivation rather than obligation.“People are there because they want to do it ... because they want to make it better and have a good time,” she said.Because of the band’s elective status, only a few of its 260 student members are music majors, Croghan said. The rest cover a vibrant spectrum of interests and activities — and represent roughly 80 different academic concentrations, Koch said.“It’s a really good group of people ... from all over,” Croghan said. “I have friends in the [Engineering] School, friends in the [Architecture] School [and] everybody there is so intelligent.”The chance to interact with such a diverse group of student musicians daily is one of the main factors that drew Pease to take the job as the director of bands.“I didn’t think about [the decision] so much as starting a band ... [as wanting] to work with really bright students,” Pease said. “I learn a lot from them.”Pease has previously taught at both high school and college levels, and as director of bands at the University, he oversees the Cavalier Marching Band, Wind Ensemble and Men’s Basketball Band, in addition to teaching Wind Ensemble. Pease said he tries to get to know each student involved in band activities and enjoys watching them develop and pursue their diverse range of talents. One band student, for example, is currently conducting cancer research.“He tries just as hard to get a B-flat as he does to [complete] his cancer research,” Pease said.Koch and Zampetti share Pease’s respect for the students’ talent — Zampetti once taught Pease himself — and all three leaders credited the current marching band’s structure for translating that respect into a high level of student governance. In addition to regular drill leaders and section members, Koch said the marching band has about 30 student staff members to fulfill various duties, such as equipment set-up, banquet preparations and Web updates.Zampetti noted the ability of student leaders to connect directors and musicians — “to transition the learning into something kids can really relate to.”Within the drumline, Zampetti relies heavily upon Engineering graduate student Michael Purvis to help lead and fill his place when necessary.Just as Pease relies on students for current leadership, he also looks to them for future development.“I try to sit down with [them] and find out what they like about the band, what ... they think our identity is, [and] where they should go,” he said.If anything, he said he hopes to keep channeling more power to the students who already lead each other on and off the field.Koch and Zampetti agreed about the need to maintain student leadership and focus on the importance of the group as a whole. Everything the marching band does — from rehearsing long hours to rushing in unison through the Scott Stadium tunnel — is “based on being part of a team,” Zampetti said.
(03/15/07 4:00am)
William Harvey, University vice president and chief officer for diversity and equity, was recently appointed president of the newly founded National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education. This organization provides a support system for diversity officers at colleges and universities around the country, allowing them to share ideas for promoting greater diversity.