Student group IC Mixed discusses mixed-race experiences

Posted in Articles, Campus Life, Media Archive, United States on 2017-04-05 19:38Z by Steven

Student group IC Mixed discusses mixed-race experiences

The Ithacan
2017-04-04

Ashae Forsythe, Staff Writer


Sophomores Walt Martzen and Rianna Larkin listen intently to another IC Mixed member Feb. 22 in Friends Hall as they share personal stories of their multiracial backgrounds. Maxine Hansford/The Ithacan

In IC Mixed, if there’s one thing the students have in common, it’s that they can’t easily check one box for a race or ethnicity.

“When you can’t be put into a box, it causes inner turmoil for multiracial people themselves: ‘Where do I belong? I’m not this, I’m not that,’” said junior Luke Watkins, event coordinator for IC Mixed.

The new student organization creates spaces for people of mixed heritage to express their thoughts freely. Launched in February, IC Mixed aims to strengthen the sense of community among people who identify as mixed or multiracial through discussions, events and other programs…

Read the entire article here.

Tags: , , , , , ,

Colleges Help Ithaca Thrive In a Region Of Struggles

Posted in Articles, Campus Life, Economics, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, United States on 2013-08-05 00:34Z by Steven

Colleges Help Ithaca Thrive In a Region Of Struggles

The New York Times
2013-08-04

Jesse McKinley

ITHACA, N.Y. — In many ways, this city is not so special. It has a nice lake, some attractive houses with lawns, and a couple of colleges. But many places in upstate New York have lakes and lawns and places of high learning.

What most sets this city of 30,000 apart from many of its neighbors these days is what is absent: fear for its future.

Led by a young mayor with an inspiring back story and an idealist’s approach — he talks about sidewalks in philosophical terms — Ithaca is the upstate exception: a successful liberal enclave in a largely conservative region troubled by unemployment woes, declining or stagnant population, and post-Detroit talk of bankruptcy.

“It’s like a little San Francisco,” Nicole Roulstin, 32, an Ithaca resident, said recently, “or the Berkeley of the East.”

Much of that optimism comes from a reciprocal relationship with two institutions — Cornell University and, to a lesser degree, Ithaca College — which have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the economy and created thousands of jobs for everyone from professors to landscapers, and also fostered new companies. Ithaca and its home county, Tompkins, regularly post the lowest unemployment rate in the state. In June, Ithaca’s was 5.7 percent, tied with another college city, Saratoga Springs, where a racetrack drives an annual summer boom.

Ithaca’s model of education as an economic engine is one that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has made a priority this year as a strategy for all of upstate, where there are dozens of universities. In June, he signed into law a bill that would allow State University of New York branches and some private schools to offer tax-free zones for new businesses that open on or adjacent to campuses.

Ithaca’s mayor, Svante L. Myrick, who was invited to speak alongside the governor when he promoted the plan in May, playfully challenged other leaders of Ivy League cities in the Northeast to come to his. “And I’ll show you how we built in Ithaca the lowest unemployment rate in the state,” he said, adding that the city had been successful “because our universities have partnered with our private industries,” and did not just rely on businesses selling “sandwiches and beds” to visitors and students…

…Soft-spoken and slyly funny, Mr. Myrick is a striking success story. Living in the tiny town of Earlville, N.Y., he overcame a childhood that included stints living in shelters and sometimes sleeping in a family car. His father struggled with drug abuse, and his mother raised him and his three siblings on minimum-wage jobs, with help from his grandparents.

Mr. Myrick, whose mother is white and whose father is African-American, said he vividly remembers reading about Barack Obama as a teenager. “I thought, ‘Holy moly,’” Mr. Myrick said. “Here’s this guy, he’s mixed race, he’s got a funny name, he’s just like me. And it made me think I could go to a good school. I could do something.”…

Read the entire article here.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Essayist and Poet Paisley Rekdal to Read From Works at Ithaca College

Posted in Asian Diaspora, Media Archive, United States, Women on 2010-10-03 02:28Z by Steven

Essayist and Poet Paisley Rekdal to Read From Works at Ithaca College

Ithaca College
Clark Lounge, Egbert Hall
2010-10-05, 19:30 (Local Time)

ITHACA, NY — Essayist and poet Paisley Rekdal will give a free public reading from her works on Tuesday, Oct. 5, at Ithaca College. Her presentation, part of the Distinguished Visiting Writers Series, will be held at 7:30 p.m. in Clark Lounge, Egbert Hall.

The daughter of a Chinese-American mother and an American father of Norwegian heritage, Rekdal is the author of “The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee,” a collection of personal essays in which she confronts the difficulty of negotiating her biracial identity. She has also published three collections of poetry and will have a hybrid photo-text memoir that combines poems, nonfiction and fiction with photography, coming out from Tupelo Press in 2011.

Rekdal currently teaches at the University of Utah. She has been honored for her writing with a Village Voice Writers on the Verge Award, a Pushcart Prize, National Endowment for the Arts and Fulbright fellowships, the University of Georgia Press’s Contemporary Poetry Series Award and the Laurence Goldstein Poetry Prize from Michigan Quarterly Review.

For more information, click here.

Tags: ,