Monthly Archives: February 2022

A welcoming presence

Oluwatumininu (Tumi) Akinyombo, a senior majoring in global business and economics, has served as president of the Universitys African Student Association since her sophomore year. The aspiring strategy consultant has also worked as a Suffolk peer health educator and partnered with an African nonprofit organization on a fundraising gala to benefit visually impaired Africans.

As with Ong, nominators were moved by Akinyombos personal devotion to fellow community members. She pushes people to be their best selves by being true to her values, one wrote. Through her leadership involvement, she has made a lasting impact on the Suffolk community.

Professor Rene Reyes scholarship focuses on constitutional law, race and the law, criminal procedure, and critical race theory. He has also made a clear impact on students with his classroom teaching, which is described as consistently welcoming and respectful, while not shying away from the intersections of law and race.

Professor Reyes perfectly encapsulates the courage it takes to foster an inclusive environment at Suffolk Law for people of color, one nominator noted. In particular, [he] has worked hard to create that environment inside his classroom. Another expressed gratitude for the feeling of empowerment Reyes can bestow in conversation, adding that this is no small feat in a law school setting.

Reyes said he was both honored and humbled to be recognized, noting he will never do anything that is truly worthy of an award named for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He also expressed his gratitude for being able to work alongside students and colleagues to advance the causes of diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice.

Im very grateful to all of you for the work that you do, he concluded, and appreciate the opportunity to be able to contribute to that.

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Creating the Dream Awards - suffolk.edu

Anyone in marketing and media hears a lot about values like sustainability, environmentalism, purpose-driven advertising and promoting diversity, equity and inclusion. But conventional wisdom tends to point to those messages as being noble in spirit but largely useless when affecting a companys bottom line.

Research firm Vrity set out to prove there is actual business value to values-based advertising and, according to its latest effort, it may have succeeded. Working with BIGtoken, a free app that gathers consented data from consumers and rewards them financially for that data, Vrity was able to connect consumer sentiment towards a brands value-based message (I support X brand store chain because it tries to reduce its environmental impact) to actual purchasing behavior (I shopped at that store and spent Y amount of dollars).

Consumers say theyll shop where they see the brands doing good for the world. But when theyre not sitting in front of the survey and are deciding where to shop, are they really going to follow through with that? said Jesse Wolfersberger, Vritys CEO and co-founder, who said he believes this is the first time a researcher has connected direct action to consumer sentiment in this area. If you can align your values with the consumer, youre looking at a 60-100 percent lift in how often that person visits your store. Were talking major lift, and I was surprised it was that big.

People said they did something based on a specific value, and we were able to actually prove that through the signals we collect from them, said George Stella, co-founder and president of BIGtoken, which has consumers opt in to share banking info, shopping info and other personal data, rewards them with cash, gift cards or digital currency and lets them control how their information is used. BIGtoken was able to tap 3,500 people in its user base to confirm the premise of Vritys research in December 2021.

Vrity tracks values across 20 categories, including equality and environmentalism, but also more of-the-moment ones like employee empowerment, which addresses how companies treat their employees. Turns out it does have high lift, and a big effect on how many people visit the stores, said Wolfersberger. That was surprising but also an encouraging indicator on how consumers are approaching the economy. Without being able to show that these things have a lift, [ad] budgets [featuring these types of messages] get squashed.

Some of Vritys insights:

Neither Costco nor Kroger responded to emails seeking comment.

Seth Hargrave, CEO of Media Two Interactive, said values-based messaging has been a factor in many of his clients media efforts, including the Charlottesville, Va., Convention & Visitors Bureau (which the media agency just successfully defended this week), which is promoting its sustainability bona-fides such as farm-to-table dining.

Anytime youre looking at research from our perspective its a matter of how does that translate to return on ad spend? Something like this [Vritys research], thats more specifically saying, Our expectation is youre going to see X amount of lift or X amount of return on ad spend as a result, is absolutely valuable, said Hargrave. That gives us media buyers a point that we can begin to forecast results off of, and get buy-in from the client side as well.

For Hargrave, whats missing is the effect on lifetime value of this research, given it indicates that people under 35 were more likely influenced by these values, Are you then using a customer data platform to then prove what that lifetime value is? All of that ties into your media buy as well in terms of how youre tracking that.

Vritys research stands in stark contrast to a recent poll conducted by conservative-leaning The Heartland Institute and Rasmussen Reports, which found that American voters believe businesses should focus on traditional business metrics and that a majority of voters who have heard of the Great Reset movement (which incorporates many of the values the Vrity tests for) reject it. The survey of 1,016 likely voters, completed in early January, found that 45% of voters believe the highest priority for businesses should be providing individual consumers with high quality products and services at the lowest prices, compared to just 1% who said using business resources to pursue social justice causes.

https://digiday.com/?p=438498

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Vritys latest research sets out to prove values-based advertising can affect the bottom line - Digiday

The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women recently published a study that found that 97% of the women surveyed had experienced some form of sexual harassment.

After the research was published, 97% became the label of a viral internet movement to raise awareness for womens right to safety in the public sphere and to push for the end of sexual harassment. Women started using the hashtag #97percent in TikTok videos to share their stories of sexual harassment and sexual violence, and in Instagram posts where users linked womens rights charities and organizations.

The harsh reality in the 21st century is that while women have achieved a form of equality in terms of written legislation, they are far from achieving it in practice, as they are socially and economically inferior to their male counterparts.

One of the most brutal ways this inequality manifests is in womens lack of public safety.

I try to never walk anywhere alone, especially at night and if I am walking somewhere alone, to my car or even on campus, I try to be on the phone with a friend or my mom or someone, said Fatema Dhondia, the former president of the United Greek Council and a junior majoring in mechanical engineering and German.

Many women are able to rattle off a laundry list of precautions they take throughout the day to stay safe: Check underneath cars and backseats before driving anywhere; remove identifying stickers and pins from cars and backpacks; hold house keys between knuckles when walking through a parking garage.

Jennifer Purvis, the University of Alabama womens studies director, said experiencing sexual harassment and the constant need to stay alert factor into womens sense of well-being and even their personalities.

The University of Alabama offers organizations, resources and programming aimed at protecting women. Dhondia has invited a plethora of speakers to give presentations to her and her sorority sisters about tips to stay safe, the warning signs of human trafficking, how to react in possibly dangerous situations and more.

The University even offers a three-credit kinesiology course in self-defense for female students called KIN 155, Self Defense for Women.

The courses purpose, according to the UA course catalog, is to provide the student with the knowledge and skills that will enhance the students ability to defend herself in case of physical or sexual assault as well as to enhance her overall personal safety.

The course is open to students of any major, and no prerequisites are required.

Taking [KIN 155] is one of the best decisions Ive made. I learned so many tips and skills that I will utilize throughout the rest of my life, Dhondia said. I recommend every female student take this class if she has the chance.

Dhondia said she and her sorority sisters appreciated the education and the support, but they are left frustrated that women have to be briefed as if stepping into battle when they are taught simply how to exist in public.

They are not entering the battlefield unarmed. The market today is overwhelmed with gadgets and inventions advertised to aid womens safety. Women will carry lipstick tasers and pink pepper sprays, wear nail polish that detects date rape drugs, don scrunchies that can be used to cover their drinks, grip brass-knuckle keychains, snap-on alarm bracelets and more.

Purvis said solutions that address the actions of the victim and not the aggressor will never solve the core issues from which these problems stem.

These safety measures are taken to an even greater degree in the context of parties.

All [women] know the most important thing is to never be alone, said Dezirae Cunningham, the president of the UA student organization Women of Excellence and a senior majoring in public health. You have to have people around you, watching out for you, making sure you never walk anywhere by yourself, and that there arent people taking advantage of you if you happen to be drinking. We, as women, arent really ever allowed to relax.

Bars recognize the dangers women face and have implemented measures to protect them, such as the Angel Shot, which isnt an actual drink, but a sort of code word that women can use to alert bartenders that they are uncomfortable or in danger. The bartender can take appropriate action intervening, calling the police or removing the patron making the woman feel unsafe. Several bars have security personnel who will walk women to their cars if they request it.

Dhondia said the UGC regularly informs its members of these resources available to them.

Many sororities make sure their members know safety protocols, such as never leaving drinks unattended, never accepting an open beverage, drinking out of bottles or cans when possible, and covering the openings of drinks.

Spiking is a well-known danger to women, especially on and around college campuses.

The American Psychology Association found that almost 8% of students surveyed across three major universities reported having been drugged via a drink at some point. The study also said that women were more likely to report sexual assault as a motive while men more often said the purpose was to have fun.

I think that at the root of solving this problem is to educate both men and women about the issues women face, Cunningham said.

Purvis said the only way to see lasting reform is to overhaul sex education in the United States, because comprehensive sex education is one of the best tools in the fight for justice for women, and it is severely underutilized.

When conscious work isnt done to change the cultural climate that demands women live in these conditions, the consequences are deadly.

Prolific violence against women is a cultural truth every woman has been prepared for since a young age. However, the media and popular culture do not treat all crimes against women the same and do not necessarily treat those they do choose to cover in a sensitive manner.

According to an article by NPR, tens of thousands of Black girls and women go missing every year. Last year, that figure was nearly 100,000. These cases are rarely featured in national headlines.

Missing white woman syndrome refers to the mass hysteria that takes hold of Western media when an attractive white woman goes missing the attention and concern that is suspiciously absent from the news when women of color disappear in similar cases. The phenomenon is meant to highlight the objectification of women, the desensitization of the public to violence against women and the discrimination faced by women of color.

Its honestly exhausting to be a woman who already doesnt feel safe, but on top of that to know that no one would say anything if something were to happen to me, Cunningham said.

These ideas were recently reignited when news of Lauren Smith-Fields death and her familys subsequent lawsuit against the city of Bridgeport, Connecticut, was made public.

Smith-Fields was 23 years old when she was found dead in her apartment, and the last person she was known to be with was an older white man she had met on the dating app Bumble. The man was not considered a suspect and was not investigated in Smith-Fields disappearance and death.

Smith-Fields family is now suing the city of Bridgeport for failure to prosecute and failure to protect under the 14th Amendment.

Missing white woman syndrome and Smith-Fields death serve to reemphasize the importance of intersectionality in modern feminist movements.

Intersectional feminism illuminates the connections between all fights for justice and liberation. It shows us that fighting for equality means not only turning the tables on gender injustices but rooting out all forms of oppression, an article published by UN Women said. It serves as a framework through which to build inclusive, robust movements that work to solve overlapping forms of discrimination, simultaneously.

The Alabama chapter of United for Reproductive & Gender Equity holds this idea central to its mission as it fights for reproductive justice in the United States. In addition to engaging in activism for womens rights, the chapter also speaks about racial justice and justice for the LGBTQ community, including achieving accessibility to comprehensive health care for all individuals.

Reproductive justice demands intersectionality because of the consequences of a lack of reproductive rights.

On Dec. 1, the Supreme Court heard the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization. The case surrounded a Mississippi law that would ban abortions after 15 weeks. The decision would potentially undermine and lead to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court case that protects pregnant peoples bodily autonomy and has been used to rule restrictive abortion laws unconstitutional for the past 50 years.

Such a decision would disproportionately affect socioeconomically disadvantaged and minority communities. According to research from the Guttmacher Institute, restrictive laws against abortion do not stop abortions but rather reduce womens access to safe abortions.

The data shows that abortion rates are roughly the same in countries where abortion is broadly legal and in countries where it isnt, Zara Ahmed, an associate director of federal issues for the Guttmacher Institute, said in an article for NBC.

Beyond the debates of the morality of abortion lies the devastating truth that attempting to force women to carry pregnancies to term only serves to harm the mother, the child and the communities they are a part of.

We dont have child care services in high schools and colleges or a lot of services available, so people are going to have to quit college or in some cases be kicked out of their families, Purvis said. It would be disastrous, especially because theres not the support there.

Research from the Pew Research Center found that a majority of the American public supports abortion rights. Purvis explained that, should Roe v. Wade be overturned in 2022, she believes that the U.S. population would not be silent and that the decision would not last long.

Purvis said she doesnt know how it would manifest, but she doesnt believe society would allow it to stand.

URGE is one of several organizations across the country mobilizing people in the fight for reproductive rights.

URGE does sex education and sexual assault awareness programming, we provide information for health care access, we distribute Plan B and condoms when needed, we write letter campaigns to policymakers, said Sarah Lib Patrick, the president of URGE UA and a senior majoring in restorative justice and civil rights studies.

Purvis said women and young activists should demand better.

This story was published in the Justice Edition. View the complete issue here.

Questions? Email the Culture desk at culture@cw.ua.edu.

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'Stepping into battle': The state of women's safety - The University of Alabama Crimson White

That is a potent dynamic for a story, one reflected in different ways throughout pop history, where talented young women are exploited by powerful men. Macdonald keeps that fuse burning throughout, depicting Janets career as a personal battleground in which she has had to assert herself time and time again in a world dominated by male figures. Aged 18, she sacked her father and broke away from the Jackson organisation. Discipline without love is tyranny, and tyrants they were not, she loyally says of her parents, but her lingering unease at the choices her late father (in particular) made for her permeate the film.

Famous female talking heads, including Mariah Carey, Whoopi Goldberg, Missy Elliot and Janelle Mone, keep popping up to proclaim Janets talent and influence, but the star herself comes across as ineffably sad, often tearful, and emotionally conflicted about her career.

I was innocent, It wasnt fair, Its still painful, she remarks in a soft, trembling voice as she considers controversies that have dogged her, or relationships that went sour. Three marriages have ended in divorce, and various close personal friends (mainly choreographers, hairdressers, stylists and her official biographer, David Ritz) tentatively suggest issues with controlling men, somewhat ironically given how much of Janets most successful music has been about self-empowerment, notably her breakout 1986 album Control.

The second episode unearths compelling footage of Janet arguing with famed R&B producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis in the studio, and there is a constant assertion of her creative autonomy, yet the story keeps landing back in places where Janet feels victimised, unappreciated and uncertain who is controlling the narrative. She confesses to being an emotional eater who has struggled with her weight and reveals that Michael used to call her a pig and cow, then quickly defends him. It was not malice on his part, but it hurts.

More:

Janet Jackson, review: pain, regret and 'nipplegate' but there's no escaping Michael - The Telegraph

Where is Architecture Going After the Pandemic Fades?

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This article was originally published on Common Edge.

In terms of Covid, 2022 is more likely to be like 1920 than like 2020 or 2021.Change or die is a clich, but often a true one. The past two years under the pandemic have forced many kinds of changes across society that may have helped prevent a lot of deaths. But many other aspects of our culture had already been changing in ways that predated the pandemic, gradual shifts that, once Covid hit, became instant and ubiquitous: remote work, remote learning, the dominance of online shopping and the death of brick-and-mortar retail, the obsessive focus on health and well-being. All of this, and more, is now a fundamental aspect of our daily lives.

I think similar changes are at work in architecture.

The aesthetic revolution ofInternational School Modernism exploded into America before World War II, became the aesthetic default for recognition, and eventually was seen as the future of the profession. But radical movements change when they cannot sustaintheir expectations.Puritans were religious zealots who came to America and then, over a century, changed into Congregationalists. Marxists in the 19th century became Communists in the 20th, and now what wasCommunism has largely morphed into socialist statism.

If the past is prologue, then the pandemic may provide a pivot, where transformative change becomes possible.

Birthed in radical Modernism, the orthodoxy of Modernist aesthetics reigned unquestioned for several generations. That default outcome may be changingjust as radical Puritans and Marxists had compelling ideas for a minority of those they sought to save, while their ideas ceased to have relevance for everyone else. The internet allows for mass reaction to elite determination. There are no governing institutions, magazines, or museums to anoint a favored way of making architecture to the exclusion of others. Everyone can talk to anyone, now, for free. Ideas are flung out and responses are received. Debate occurs, instead of top-down direction from an expert class.The recent rethink in what we want from our homes was not led by HOUZZ,Architectural Digest, realtors, or the AIA, but by people deciding that what they had was not what they wanted or needed.

Architects are beginning to look at what they value, and how what they want and what they value can be manifest, not as a style, but as a basis for creating buildings and communities. This healthy change has been triggered in part by these two crazy years.

So much shut down in 2020 that most architects felt the construction constriction and a huge drop in billings that was not reversed for six months. Then the Covid bubble, when design and construction activity exploded, arrived for many and carried through to the end of 2021, when billings for most architects gravitated back to flat.

Regions vary, but the pandemic is global, so this has been a unique two-year moment when everyone was sitting in the same leaky boat. Construction is essentially an on-site, in-person exercise, classified as an essential activity during the 2020 lockdowns, so any architect building anything was busy. But economic uncertainty often stalled or terminated commercial projects or residential work in cities. Last year saw that depression become a boom, as interest rates remained low and desire ratcheted up in a time of uncertainty. Now, as with 1920, when the flu pandemic waned, Covid is slowly becoming more of a bother and less of an outright terror.

What does this mean for design? Since the Great Recession of 2008, the rollercoaster of the construction worlds boom/bust economic model had flattened to a lower-than-boom/higher- than-bust continuity.This decade of dull activity was essentially without any discernible direction.Yesterdays starchitects were passing away, with no new heroes offering anything but a broadly applied mutation of Modernism, or the parallel boutique of Classicism. Of course there were ongoing refinements of sustainability and resilience, and trendy marketing fads like 3D printing or tiny houses.The pandemic smashed this shaky status quo, but these two years have yet to reveal any coherent path forward and, even worse, have distracted everyone from the growing, increasingly daunting reality of climate change.

Academic enrollment for architecture was robust and steady before the pandemic, with about 27,000 students during the 201920 academic year. About 30,000 architecture positions were eliminated in 2020, and a third of those jobs returned in 2021, with an anecdotal shortage of people for jobs now plaguing the profession. Its a time of dramatic work fluctuations, but relatively steady human involvement.

Architecture culture, however, has been forever changed by digital technology. The 200,000-plus architects and 27,000 architecture students are finding each other instead of looking to an architectural establishment. Internet sites like The EntreArchitect, which has grown to more than 6,000 members in the past year, are conducting daily live streams and podcasts, bypassing the established venues of top-down communication. Architect Evelyn Lee focuses on new and evolving ways of using an architecture degree and making things in her Practice Disrupted podcast, as part of the website Practice of Architecture. Websites like Common Edge, ArchDaily, Architizer, and other venues have opened up editorial content to a broad spectrum of approaches, aesthetics, and authors. For the first time, thousands of voices (often unedited, alas), can express thought without the correct focus of the media and industry establishment.

When the Great Recession destroyed advertising revenue for publishing and limited the cash that architects had for PR and photographers, a long-established way of promoting architecture was compromised. That same moment saw the instant availability of smartphones, with insanely good cameras, huge memory, and powerful transmission. This digital revolution turned graphic duffers into artists. Anyone can now photo, video, and narrate any perception, anywhere, instantly, often for free,and share universally.

Institutions are both forming and changing, taking advantage of these new technologies. In my teaching at the University of Hartford, I can bring in many different voices into the studio at no cost. Similarly, I can be a live jury critic for Ryerson University in Toronto at no cost to them, and very limited time by me. The Building Beauty Program has flourished on the internet and added ancillary seminars and lectures. My local AIA chapter has also offered any number of new connections in programs, offering a diversity of perspective that was impossible before these technologies and was accelerated by the circumstances of sequestration.

Our Covid isolation has also spawned an upsurge in populist criticism, led by the participants, not by an elite dictating what gets criticized or why. Modernism, a Facebook group for architects, has long debates and open submissions for anyone who signs up. Another, Thats It: Im Architecture Shaming, has more than 500,000 members and endless commentary in conversation. Kate Wagners McMansion Hell remains an internet sensation, where posts receive thousands of comments, unsolicited, unedited, and free.

Change is happening, whether we like it or not.In cities, this means that office buildings in now-struggling commercial zones may morph into mixed-use structures. Universities may have part of their student enrollment shift fromin-person to interest-based classes, facilitated by remote capacity, but also manifesting the personal empowerment new technologies afford anyone who can access them. Telemedicine will live on long after Covid becomes endemic. And the ability to see and share architecture and even find designers who share your values (as opposed to a look) is now possible. Humans need human contact, so the use of virtual meetings will change to suit its limitationsonce this pandemic ebbs.

For a century in architecture, the canon of Modernist orthodoxy squeezed out aesthetic diversity, and was threatened for only a decade by the now-disdained PoMo revolt. But the time when a consensus elite has the exclusive tools of communication, creating an expert class for publication, communication and recognition, is over.

Ding-dong, the Canon may be dead. In its place may be a breadth of architectural expression that will surely alarm the purists, the ideologues, and will assuredly have some flawed outcomes, but might also celebrate the undeniablehumanity of buildings. Our culture continually finds both new language and new ways of speaking to each other, especially in unprecedented times. And thats when real change happens.

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Where is Architecture Going After the Pandemic Fades? - ArchDaily