——–

One word cost Allen Zaruba his teaching career at Towson University.

Zaruba, a professional artist and adjunct art professor who has taught at the University for 12 years, was fired last Thursday after being reported to the provost’s office for using a racial slur in class.

Zaruba was lecturing in his Visual Concepts class last Monday. The class was discussing a textbook he called “very politically incorrect,” “Themes of Contemporary Art” by Jean Robertson and Craig McDaniel. While reviewing a chapter about identity and the body, Zaruba referred to himself as “a nigger on the corporate plantation.”

As soon as the words came out of his mouth, Zaruba said, he regretted them. He contends, however, that the phrase was not directed at anyone other than himself and was not meant to be racially offensive.

“I am not a racist. I never have been. I’ve been raised overseas and in other cultures. It just absolutely kills me,” he said in an interview Sunday, later adding that he serves in the prison ministry, teaches Sunday school and that his stepfather was a black man and he “loved him dearly.”

Maria Bernier, a sophomore studio art major who was in the class, spoke highly of Zaruba and said the remark was not out of character for the professor, and was not intended or interpreted by much of the class as discriminatory.

“He’s very honest in his descriptions, and sometimes when he describes things, he uses words that I guess a lot of people would find … offensive,” she said.

Similar language had been used before, according to Bernier.

“He used the word to illustrate a point. He wasn’t trying to offend anyone. And obviously … we were understanding. And going into our class, you kind of should expect some level of shock and, you know, in your face [content],” she said.

At a Student Government Association-sponsored study break event Wednesday afternoon, provost Marcia Welsh disputed Zaruba’s and Bernier’s accounts. She said the racial slur was made at the beginning of class and was unrelated to the course of discussion.

Following last Monday’s incident, a student, who is at this point remaining anonymous, and the student’s parents complained to the provost’s office. After internal deliberations, none of which included Zaruba, he was fired by phone last Thursday night by Stuart Stein, interim chair of the art department.

When asked Wednesday, Welsh would not elaborate on the specifics of the conversations that took place, nor would she confirm whether or not similar incidents with Zaruba had happened in the past.

“I have not had anything in writing. Needless to say, I am in quite deep shock,” Zaruba said.

According to documents from the provost’s budget office, the standard contract offered to part-time faculty members stipulates that they serve “at the pleasure of the University’s president” and allows the University to dismiss part-time instructors for “any legal reason.”

An official statement released Wednesday from the provost’s office said the former professor’s remarks were “not part of the academic discussion of his classroom” and the decision to fire Zaruba was reached in consultation with department officials.

“Towson University strongly supports and upholds academic freedom in the classroom and across our learning community; however, such patently offensive language on the part of University employees will not be tolerated and does not reflect our value system,” the statement said.

In response to a question at the study break, Welsh later added that the decision to dismiss Zaruba was based on a one-time event and not a pattern of similar remarks.

Zaruba is an established artist, recognized locally and internationally. He spent 10 years as an illustrator for the U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels flight squad, according to an online biography. During the 2003-2004 academic year, he was a Fulbright scholar working in South Korea. This semester at Towson, Zaruba had been teaching two other classes, one section of 3D Process and one section of Sculpture I.

A faculty member who spoke on the condition of anonymity said Tuesday he felt the administrators “did what they had to do” and that the former professor had accepted what had happened.

“I don’t think they had any other choice. I think that the administration feels as bad about this as anybody,” the source said. “I think nobody feels good about this … This is an ugly, bad situation which I am sure the provost and the administration feels as bad about as anybody. And I think that it was probably a choice they couldn’t avoid making. And Al knows that.”

The source said they were “absolutely and totally certain that there isn’t a racist bone in [Zaruba’s] body.”

Bernier echoed that sentiment, saying “I’ve only been in his class for a couple weeks and I know just from hearing what he has to say about life in general and the way he teaches his class, he’s a good teacher and a good person. I don’t know, I just feel somebody just took it way too far.”

According to Welsh’s statement, a replacement instructor has been found to teach Zaruba’s classes.

Towson students, academics react

Since last Thursday, the former instructor has received several supportive calls and e-mails from students, which, he said Sunday, he was keeping on file.

“I just want them to hear him out,” Bernier, the student, said, also adding that students in the class are organizing, with flyers in the Center for the Arts and e-mails to Welsh.

Zaruba said he was also concerned about what the incident means, not just for himself, but also for other faculty members.

“It’s frightening, to tell you the truth,” he said. “We have gotten so politically correct that the whole concept of academic freedom is really beginning to be a question here, if I cannot make a simple mistake which I deeply repented.”

Deverick Murray, president of Towson’s Black Student Union, was interested in learning more about what happened and did not want to rush to judgment.

“I don’t want this to be covered up as just a race issue as some white professor saying the word ‘nigger,’” Murray said. “I want to make sure that what was said is properly put into context and make sure that we don’t just discard this issue as just another bad racial slur, but let’s really find out what happened so that way, we can truly have a good discussion about it.”

Murray added that the phrase Zaruba used “doesn’t seem to me like he’s saying anything to degrade any person of color.”

Academics are also raising concerns about how the situation was handled.

Robert Kreiser, spokesman for the Washington, D.C.-based American Association of University Professors, said Zaruba should have been afforded more due process, such as a hearing in front of other faculty members, before any action was taken.

“The fact that no such hearing was provided and the administration acted narrowly to dismiss him is not consistent with accepted standards in the academic community,” he said.

He said the University’s actions lacked respect for Zaruba’s service to the institution.

“We’re not talking about someone showing up for the first time teaching at Towson,” Kreiser said. “It’s not appropriate for a college or university to treat somebody in that fashion.”

Richard Vatz, a professor of mass communication and communication studies and a member of the University Senate is, like Zaruba, known for his outspokenness in class discussions. He said Tuesday that while Zaruba’s use of the phrase was “indefensible,” he would not have dismissed the professor unless he had a record of complaints.

“In the absence of any other factors, I would not find this to justify firing immediately. I would find a probationary step to be justifiable so, in my opinion, given the limited information that I have, if that’s all there is, I would not have fired him on the spot,” Vatz said.

Moving forward

Zaruba said he was told no appeal process exists to contest his dismissal. Zaruba was examining his legal options, he said Monday, but more recently said that he has no legal recourse. Zaruba turned in his office keys Tuesday morning.

“He’s accepted the whole thing,” the faculty source said. “He alone is responsible for something that was just unavoidable.”

While the source admitted to not being totally familiar with the process of hiring and firing part-time faculty, when asked, the source expressed nothing but respect for the work adjuncts like Zaruba do for the University.

“They teach a lot of courses and reduce the cost of education tremendously here. They add an incredible, wonderful ingredient to the education at Towson University and schools across the nation,” the source said. “I can’t say whether the legalities of their hiring and firing are just or not. All I would say is that they’re not paid nearly what they deserve to be paid.”

Kreiser, the AAUP spokesman, agreed that part-time faculty members deserve more protection, either through unionization or changes to the standard contract “to address consistent mistreatment by a lot of colleges and universities,” he said.

After an online report from The Towerlight was released Monday night, the incident was briefly a topic of discussion at Tuesday’s Student Government Association meeting, where SGA president Jon Graf promised to look into the matter further.

Amy Ruark, a sophomore studio art major who took Zaruba’s Studio I class last semester, started a Facebook group Tuesday afternoon called “TU Team Zaruba” in response to the report. As of 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, the group had 82 members. She said she wanted to use the group to gain support for Zaruba’s reinstatement.

Welsh “couldn’t say” about considering Zaruba’s reinstatement at some point in the future. On Wednesday, she characterized the student reaction to reports as “mixed” but said that it was not about what the students thought.

“I have to say that as an institution, we cannot tolerate racial slurs, racial comments,” she said. “I think we have to realize we are a university and it isn’t an issue of freedom of speech. It’s an issue of being there for our students. A faculty member is there for the student no matter where they are on campus or off campus so we expect the best behavior of all faculty

at all times.”

As for considering reinstatement, Zaruba said in a Wednesday morning interview with WBAL Radio he would be “honored” to return, if asked.

Zaruba said Sunday that, despite what happened, he still believes Towson is a “wonderful school,” but “unfortunately this kind of thing clouds a lot of issues and it traumatizes my students.”

———

Welcome back from the long break. So as I mentioned in a previous column,I spent a week during my time off in Japan. Yes, it was beautiful. If I had my druthers I would spend this space going on and on about the food. Oh man, the food.

But you came for Tyler Tech, not Tyler Talks Sushi.

Most of my time in Japan was spent in one of the greatest cities in the world, Tokyo. One of the nation’s capital’s many unique neighborhoods is Akihabara, or Akiba for short. Another nickname for the area is “Electric Town” and it’s easy to see why. Visitors to the district, especially after sunset, are treated to a sensory overload. Lights and sounds and people fill the area. Shop employees pass out flyers and shout “Irasshaimase!” (basically, “Welcome, come in, buy our stuff!”) at the top of their lungs, and treat all who enter with bows and smiles.

If you buy a candy bar, they treat you like royalty (or call you “master” if you’re in a maid cafe, but I’m not going to talk about maid cafes, so Google them). Much of the neighborhood is dominated by four tech dealer juggernauts:

Laox, Akky, Sofmap and Yodobashi Camera. The first three have several pretty big outposts spread around the streets while Yodobashi has an impossibly massive building all to itself right outside the train station. It even has its own theme song that sounds like a jazzy version of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” but that’s another story.

A lot of these places call themselves camera stores, but that’s a misnomer. At Yodobashi, for example, they have sporting goods, bicycles, action figures, video games… it’s like a Best Buy inside a Wal- Mart. Wandering all these places was great. A friend and I saw obscenely low prices on headphones, global phones that worked everywhere but Japan, games that will never come to the States (“The Idol M@ster,” I’m looking at you) and the crane games from hell.

Really, I got addicted to those things, trying to get this toy I spotted for myself and a certain

Towerlight editor (the other nerd). The prizes even have hooks on them, making it look far easier

than it is.

I spent more than $25 at that arcade and all I have to show for it is a little “Nico Nico Douga” plushie. Fortunately, within a few days, I went cold turkey.

One of the things that makes Akihabara unique for foreign shoppers is duty-free shopping. Usually a pleasure afforded only to airport wanderers on their way out of the country, many stores in Akiba will take out the 5% consumption tax for anybody who racks up more than 10,000 yen ($110) in sales and has been in the country for less than six months.

Excellent, right? Kind of.

I got the sense that a lot of these prices are jacked up to fool foreigners. And with the exchange rate as poor as it is, I got the sense that not many people were biting. Next time, however, I fully hope to be able to splurge on that camera and that pair of headphones with no regrets.

For more of my escapades in Japan, check my video diaries at www.youtube.com/aresef.

Next time: What the heck happened at the Consumer Electronics Show and Macworld over the winter? Meanwhile, his Apple-y highness Steve Jobs has stepped back from day to day duties as the iconic firm’s figurehead for health reasons. But the rumors of Circuit City’s death are not as greatly exaggerated as we thought, as the nation’s second largest electronics store announced this month that it’s going out of business.

Is the sky falling? I don’t think so, but more about that next week.

]]> http://www.tylerwaldman.com/2010/03/05/tyler-tech-electric-town-lights-up-tokyo/feed/ 0 http://www.tylerwaldman.com/2009/11/22/the-dirt-on-mike-rowe/ http://www.tylerwaldman.com/2009/11/22/the-dirt-on-mike-rowe/#comments Sun, 22 Nov 2009 18:55:05 +0000 Tyler http://www.tylerwaldman.com/?p=51 Originally published in The Towerlight November 16, 2009.

Many students struggle to find employment after graduation, but in the last four years, one Towson alumnus has had more than 200 jobs and counting.

Mike Rowe, a Dundalk native who graduated in 1985, is best known as host of the Discovery Channel series “Dirty Jobs.” But long before he took on tasks such as pig farming, garbage collecting and mining, he was a communication studies major.

Rowe said he felt very indecisive about what he wanted to do when he came to Towson in 1982, transferring from the Community College of Baltimore County, Essex.

He took classes in English, speech, philosophy and theater. Rowe joked that he “majored in everything,” and didn’t decide on communication “until the last possible second.”

“[Towson] was just a place to go learn and try to figure out what the hell to do,” he said.  “It wasn’t about getting a degree. The degree was a symptom, actually.”

One of Rowe’s favorite professors at Towson was Richard Vatz of the department of mass communication and communication studies. Vatz recalled Rowe as a hard worker and an active voice in class discussions.

“He was one of those people who was energetic, but never ever hostile – he just enjoyed his role of the inquiring and participating student,” Vatz said in an e-mail. “He was curious about everything… I would guess he has a very broad range of interests today.”

Rowe described himself as “lost” and somewhat disconnected from Towson as a transfer student and as a commuter driving from Dundalk every day.

“I got a lot of parking tickets,” he said.

When he was set to walk across the stage and collect his degree, he wasn’t even in town. He was at Madison Square Garden seeing Pink Floyd.

“When it was over, I didn’t have an emotional connection to the school,” he said. “It was more mercenary than missionary.”

After graduation he started looking for work. He auditioned for the now-defunct Baltimore Opera Company, where he spent the next six years performing, enjoying the music and meeting women. His odds were pretty good, he said.

“There were maybe 30 guys. Twenty-five of them had no interest in any of the girls. The other five – well three were married and the other single guy, he had a mole on his eyelid with a lot of black hair growing out of it,” he said. “So basically, it was me.”

One night, during an intermission, Rowe left the Lyric Opera House and went across Mount Royal Avenue to the Mount Royal Tavern. He sat at the bar to watch a football game, still wearing full Viking regalia from his performance. The bartender had on the QVC Cable Shopping Channel. When Rowe asked why, the bartender told him QVC’s talent hunters were coming to town the next day.

“I tell him I think that sounds like the end of Western civilization, and he bets me that I couldn’t get a callback,” he said.

Rowe bet $100. He won – QVC hired him on the spot. He then spent three years on the graveyard shift, from midnight to 3 a.m., a time slot that he called “the best TV in the world ever.”

He sold everything from Spam to eel skin wallets in what he described as a hybrid of sales and stand-up comedy. Videos of him hawking bargains survive on YouTube.

“I wasn’t exactly proud of it, but later in my career I realized just how important those three years were,” he said. “By the time I made it to Hollywood in 1993, I had a unique training program in home shopping.”

After years of pitching and hosting, Rowe convinced the Discovery Channel to give him his dream job.

“I’ve always wanted to be ‘The Discovery Guy,’” he said. “I’ve always believed the way to work in television is not as a host but as a viewer.”

In 2005, they hired him and sent him to exotic destinations, including Mount Everest and the Egyptian pyramids. They asked him to do some specials to introduce him to the viewers. He pitched “Somebody’s Gotta Do It,” which produced three episodes with nine jobs, earning a massive response and viewer requests for Rowe to cover their job.

“It was not supposed to be a hit; it was not supposed to be a series. It wasn’t even supposed to be a show,” he said.

The miniseries was reborn as “Dirty Jobs,” and since then, Rowe has been on the road for most of the last four years. For Rowe, every new job is a lesson.

“I just thought it had been so long since anyone went out and genuinely let the viewers see them fail. Not an expert, but just a good-natured participant,” he said.

He said “Dirty Jobs” may be the only reality show that lives up to the genre’s name.

“It’s real reality. We don’t do take two, we don’t rehearse, we don’t scout. We don’t do any of that stuff,” he said.

“Dirty Jobs,” has helped change minds about the people who work in those occupations, he said.

“You juxtapose work, sweat and adversity with good humor, laughter. Those things together send a message that TV typically has been unable to deliver,” he said.

“And it’s important. Not everything that looks like drudgery is drudgery. We’ve declared war, essentially, on the traditional notion of work, and so we’re surprised when we see a plumber who’s not 300 pounds with a huge butt crack.”

Rowe is currently at home in San Francisco on a rare two-month hiatus. He isn’t sitting still, however – he’s working on two books: one, a memoir of his early days in Baltimore, and the other, a book of essays titled “Lessons from the Dirt,” a chronicle of the last four years of “Dirty Jobs.”

“I’m not sure which [of the two stories] is dirtier,” Rowe said with a laugh. “I’ve been crawling through a river of crap most of my life, it seems. Lately, I’ve just realized that it’s fun.”

Baltimore’s Inner Harbor is known for a lot of things. Crab cakes, boats, tourist traps… breakdancing?

Nestled between the National Aquarium’s ambient music and natural sounds on one side of the water and the occasional gospel choir performance on the other is a boom box blasting Daft Punk, Michael Jackson or whatever can be danced to.

Several Towson students, including senior electronic media and film major Sean Johnson, have gained recognition and earned hundreds of dollars in tips by breakdancing downtown.

Johnson, who performs under the nickname “Blak Majik,” has been breakdancing for four years. He said he started breaking when a friend, Danny “Atomic Goofball” Nguyen, introduced him to the culture.

“He told me where I could go to meet people to break and just pretty much he got me into the culture,” he said. “I learned the basics from him and took it from there.”

Johnson said his interest in music and art drew him into the breakdancing, or b-boy, scene.

As he honed his talent and started learning things he didn’t think he could do before, Johnson became immersed in the b-boy culture.

“It’s not just like breakdancing is breakdancing,” he said. “There’s actually a culture behind hip-hop, and just being a part of that kind of pulls you in the more you get involved with it. And after that it becomes like a way of life.”

He traces the history back to the origins of hip-hop and its four elements – the DJ, the rapper, the breakdancers and the graffiti artists – as opposed to the gang-influenced music that later became popular.

“The whole idea behind hip-hop was to be a positive thing as opposed to the gangs that were overtaking the boroughs in New York, which was the negative side,” he said.

Johnson has more than one of those elements covered. In addition to dancing, he is the programming director for XTSR, the student-run Internet radio station. He is an experienced DJ, and said he first joined the station to gain more experience and run his own show. Today, he can occasionally be found working the turntables outside the Media Center or on the Speaker’s Circle with XTSR.

Johnson also became involved with Towson’s Groove Crew, an SGA-affiliated group that practices Tuesday and Wednesday evenings on the stage at Paws.

“I guess you could say we called it a club because we needed an excuse to be able to go to Paws. Other than that the school would say, ‘Hey, you guys can’t use this space,’” he said.

Johnson described the Baltimore breakdancing scene as a tight-knit community. Towson’s Groove Crew has a very good relationship with other local teams of breakdancers, he said.

Earlier this year, Johnson was invited by the Baltimore b-boy crew The Regulators to join them at the Inner Harbor on weekends, where they performed throughout the summer. The Regulators are well-respected on the Baltimore breakdancing scene, with some members who have 10 years of experience, and two members who performed in the film “Step Up 2: The Streets.”

Johnson said he enjoys being able to show off for the large crowds that gather downtown, and he even gives a few quick lessons to children and their parents.

“You see it in their faces,” he said. “I guess they stop kind of in awe the same way that anyone else does when they see us at Paws up here.”

Johnson has also performed at Baltimore’s annual Artscape festival and recently landed a contract to perform at the Verizon Center in Washington, D.C., during Washington Capitals games.

“I love music. I’ve always loved music,” he said. “I like dancing, and more than anything else, it’s because I want to try to be better than I was the day before. It’s just like every time I’m doing something it’s like, ‘You know what, I’ve never tried this before, let me try it now and see if it works.’ You’re kind of competing against yourself.”

In the face of record high gas prices, more area residents and employees of local businesses are choosing to take mass transit instead of driving to their destination to cut their fuel bills.

“It’s been very helpful,” said Irene Azu, a city resident who commutes several days a week to the Bank of America in Owings Mills. “The monthly pass (good for bus, Metro or light rail) is about $64, so it’s been very helpful.”

Owings Mills is home to the western terminus of Baltimore’s Metro Subway line, which travels southeast through downtown Baltimore to Johns Hopkins Hospital. The Maryland Transit Administration also operates several local bus lines in the area.

Ridership on Metro has seen a “solid increase,” according to spokeswoman Jo Greene. Between March and April, the last month for which statistics were available, the daily number of riders rose from 47,000 to 49,600.

“I think what you’re seeing is a combination of gas prices but also this awareness about the environment,” Greene said.

Many area residents who commute downtown are choosing to leave their cars at the park-and-ride and take the train to downtown Baltimore.

Some residents, however, feel the service falls short of what it could be.

Chris Curry, a 29-year-old Las Vegas native, recently moved to Owings Mills with her husband. The bus service in the Baltimore area is more limited, she said.

“The buses (in Las Vegas) run all night,” Curry said.

Greene said the agency is always working on improving service. The agency relies on feedback from customers and operators, as well as regular public hearings.

“We are closely monitoring the ridership levels on the M-line buses that service the Metro stations, where we can increase frequency and capacity, so we have our fingers on the pulse of what our customers are asking for,” she said.

Also discussed at recent public hearings was the possibility of increasing service on the 56 and 59 bus lines. The two lines provide all-day service throughout the Owings Mills area every 20 minutes at peak times, as opposed to the M lines, which operate mainly at rush hour.

Nate Payer, director of public information for Transit Riders Action Council of Baltimore, said that part of the difficulty in increasing service stems from the availability of vehicles.

“There’s a finite amount of buses, and that limitation creates the situation we have now,” he said.

Payer said he hopes that the recent pressure at the pump sparks a renewed interest in mass transit and its advantages.

“A lot of people might ride it disgruntledly, but it is our hope that as gas prices go up, ridership will increase,” he said.

Payer said that MTA’s flat fare system is a great advantage to local riders.

“For those who travel long distances on mass transit and have the flat fare, people traveling from Owings Mills to downtown, they’re only paying $1.60. In that situation, economics are a no-brainer.”

Azu feels it’s worth it.

“The buses don’t come on time, but it’s still better than buying gas every day,” she said.

Monday evening’s town hall meeting at Baltimore’s historic Senator Theatre started like many screenings had over the last 20 years, with a speech by the theater’s owner, Tom Kiefaber.

“I didn’t call this meeting,” Kiefaber said in front of a crowd of more than 500 people. “I wanted to welcome you all at least one more time to the historic Senator Theatre.”

He was met with a minute-long standing ovation, a stark contrast to the tone of the night’s events. Kiefaber, who has run the theater since 1988, said he was deeply touched.

“It was honestly probably one of the more emotional experiences of my life, when I just offered a simple welcome and got people standing and applauding,” he said. “It was overwhelming and believe me, I’ll never forget it.”
The meeting comes several days after 1st Mariner Bank, which holds the theater’s mortgage, announced plans to move ahead with foreclosure proceedings on the Senator. An auction could be held as soon as mid-April. Monday morning, the theater announced in a press release that Sunday evening’s screening of “Watchmen” would be the final first-run film screening there for the foreseeable future, citing Kiefaber’s troubles fulfilling his payroll.

“Hopefully the urgency of the situation was transmitted, if nothing else,” Kiefaber said.
According to the bank, a payment has not been made on the theater’s $940,000 debt since September. About $600,000 of the theater’s loan is guaranteed by Baltimore City. Collateral attached to the loan includes two houses adjacent to the theater as well as Kiefaber’s house in Sparks, Md. The properties could be seized by the bank if not enough money is raised by the theater’s auction.

Kiefaber and others have been negotiating a deal between the bank, Baltimore City and the State of Maryland to transfer ownership of the theater to the Senator Community Trust, a non-profit organization of community and business leaders. The city would assume the rest of the theater’s debt. The trust would then contract management of the venue to a private company or investor. The details of the plan had not yet been finalized when 1st Mariner accelerated foreclosure procedures.

Nothing was decided at the Monday meeting, which was primarily used to gauge community reactions.

“My goal was to try to find some consensus about action steps going forward,” Sean Brescia, owner of Clearpath Management and an informal spokesman for the Senator Community Trust at Monday’s meeting, said. “We’ve heard a lot of consensus about the community being willing to step up and buy time if the bank will entertain that. So I think it’s on us to publish that action plan and then kind of go from there and see what happens.”

City Councilman Bill Henry was on hand to explain the city’s plan and the financial situation. According to Henry, numerous organizations expressed interest in taking over the Senator, including Baltimore Collegetown Network and Towson University. The University wanted to use it as space for lectures, films and events. However, no organization was able to present a viable plan for the space.

The meeting ran for three hours, allowing area residents and business owners to air their questions and frustrations with the bank and with local officials. Maria Allwine, a local activist and co-chair of the Maryland Green Party, was one of them. She spoke up at several points during the meeting to voice her concerns, calling the bank’s sudden moves against the theater a “land grab.”

“We should be loud,” Allwine said. “It’s a community treasure, and not just because it’s a first-run movie theater. It’s because of the work Tom does in the community… The community will suffer. Businesses will suffer. People that live around here will suffer if this place is foreclosed upon and is turned into something else like a church or condos.”
Some local residents were still concerned following the meeting.

“What we need to hear back from the community trust is a clear and concise call to action, so that we can work together to get some change,” Shelly Terranova, a Lake Walker resident, said. “A clear call to action at the beginning of the meeting might have set the agenda more quickly.”

Brescia said he is optimistic but realistic. He said he has no doubt the Senator can be saved.

“The question is will the various stakeholders work with us to buy time?” he said. “And I think with consensus and broad community support, they’ll have to.”

By the end of the meeting, several community members had already pledged their support in the form of checks and even loose change given to members of the Senator Community Trust.

“It’s a collective vision that needs to take place here,” Kiefaber said. “My family and I have kept the theater going as long as possible and hopefully there will be a way forward to be able to have it become actually the people’s theater in more than name only.”

Kiefaber said he just looks forward to the ordeal being over. While he will always remember the ovation he received Monday night, it may be the final time he takes the stage to welcome people to the historic Senator Theater.

“I need to move on with my life,” he said. “Frankly, the Senator has always been my dream. The dream has become a nightmare. And I want to wake up from it and move on with the rest of my life and not see the Senator close or be degraded in some way that is not in keeping with the fact it is one of the most extraordinary theaters in the world. I grew up here, literally. My daughter grew up here. My mom grew up here. And my family’s been running it for 70 years, and hopefully the next 70 years will be as illustrious as it was with my family’s ownership.”

Goucher's president, Sanford Ungar, (onstage, left) moderated the forum with Karl Rove in the Kraushaar Auditorium.

Originally published as an online exclusive for The Towerlight on September 17, 2009. The Towerlight was the only media organization present at the event. Photos by Eric Gazzillo.

He is a man of many nicknames. The Architect. Boy Genius. Turd Blossom.

Karl Rove, arguably one of the most divisive figures of the George W. Bush administration, was the Fall 2009 speaker of the President’s Forum at Goucher College Wednesday night.

The forum at Kraushaar Auditorium, presented and moderated by Goucher’s president, Sanford Ungar, attracted 1,200 people, filling the room.

Police presence outside the auditorium was heavy. More than 18 police vehicles surrounded the area.

Rove’s appearance drew a fairly hostile crowd.

“No matter who we bring, there’s always going to be somebody who doesn’t like it,” Kristen Keener, Goucher’s media relations director, said. “Obviously, Karl Rove is more divisive than other speakers.”

Nicholas Powell, who described himself as a “temporarily out-of-school” Goucher student, turned out with about 30 other protestors outside the auditorium. He said he came to protest, “to expose Karl Rove as the war criminal that he is, the war profiteer.”

“People like that should not be allowed to speak on college campuses across the country, especially when it’s for profit,” Powell said. “I would like to see him arrested. I would like to see him put on trial for the crimes that’s he’s committed against humanity, not even against this country, against humanity.”

Powell and a friend were removed from the audience shortly after Rove’s remarks began after standing up holding two signs that read “Citizens Arrest Rove.”

Pikesville resident Bradley Barthlow was the sole counter-protester outside Krausharr Auditorium, holding a homemade sign rallying against perceived media bias. He said participating in the Tea Party protests in Washington, D.C., motivated him to become more involved in protests, and that his decision to counter-protest at the speech tonight was “spur of the moment.”

“Like him or not, Karl Rove is an individual, he’s a real good speaker and he knows politics and he knows what’s happening in America right now and I have to support him,” he said.

After numerous interruptions, Rove spoke for 20 minutes about what it was like to work in the White House. Following his remarks, he sat down with Ungar, who was a gracious but unforgiving host. Ungar questioned him about topics such as involvement in the war in Iraq and opinions on the health care debate.

The floor was soon opened to Goucher students, who pressed Rove on issues such as health care and education. One student asked about his legal opinion on gay marriage, which in his response, he compared to polygamy. Towards the end of the event, Ahmed Tarik, an Iraqi student approached the microphone to confront Rove about the costs of the war.

“Saddam Hussein was a dictator and everybody knows that,” he said. “But he was convicted and hanged for the 128 people he killed… how about two million [killed since the American invasion]?”

He went on to cite statistics on Iraqi civilian casualties and refugees. Rove responded angrily, claiming Tarik’s numbers were “wildly exaggerated,” leading to the event’s tensest moment.

“[Refugees] didn’t flee the Americans,” Rove said. “It was the violence of people like Saddam’s dead-enders, the Sunni insurgents and Al Qaeda.”

Tarik and much of the audience disagreed as Rove segued to a story about one-time Homeland Security nominee Bernard Kerik, who went to Baghdad to train police and found torture tapes from the Hussein regime.

Much of the conversation followed this adversarial tone, with most of the students questioning him on his role in the White House and his role in national politics. The event ended with many unanswered questions and some unsatisfied students.

“I was a little disappointed in some of the questions,” Kenneth Case, a 2009 Goucher alum, said. “I thought there were a lot of things specifically in regards to Karl Rove’s position in the White House and his individual role that weren’t really addressed… I think it would have gone better had more of the people that had significant ideas about why this man should be criticized had put their thoughts into questions that they would have asked to put him in a tough position.”

He admitted Rove had a rhetorical advantage.

“Since he is one of the brilliant political strategists of our time, he did a pretty good job of covering his ass,” he said.

Goucher freshman Olana Kingsley agreed.

“I was really excited to hear him speak, but now I’m really frustrated because I feel I didn’t get much out of the talk because of all the diversions,” she said.

Photo by Alan Dovell

Swords clash. Families feud. Teens find forbidden love. This isn’t a prime time drama or a new movie. It’s one of the most popular love stories in history.

“Romeo and Juliet,” which will premiere Friday night in the Center for the Arts Mainstage Theatre, is one of William Shakespeare’s most frequently performed plays, telling the story of two teens from rival Italian families who fall in love and meet a tragic end.

According to director Steven Satta, an associate professor of theatre arts, the theatre department has a practice of doing a Shakespearean work every two years, “and it was time for Shakespeare,” he said.

“Romeo and Juliet” is also part of the theatre department’s outreach program. The cast works with middle and high school students to teach them how they worked on the play the students are reading in class.

Written more than 400 years ago, the play never went out of style, according to Satta. Many of the themes and characters are still used today’s films, literature and television.

“It’s like ‘Desperate Housewives.’ There’s sex and violence and intrigue and romance,” he said.

However, Satta said he wanted to give Towson’s production a unique spin because, as he said, the crew “didn’t want to do a museum piece.”
“While sometimes historical accuracies can be fascinating, they don’t usually make for exciting theatre,” he said.
To that end, Satta said some changes were made. The crew tweaked the costumes and added live music and choreography to the play’s classic party scene, where Romeo and Juliet first meet. While he admitted to being a fan of Baz Luhrmann’s modernized 1996 film adaptation, “Romeo + Juliet,” Satta said he used the Showtime series “The Tudors” as a jumping-off point for Towson’s interpretation of the play.
That show “took a historical period and modified it so that the modern audience seeing it would have a visceral experience of what those people and those events meant in their time,” he said. “So in their time, big puffy pumpkin pants looked sexy. They look funny to us.”
But in consideration of the students coming as part of the outreach program, Satta said he kept it anchored in Shakespeare’s time.
“We decided to keep it somewhat conservative because we wanted to ensure … that the kids were seeing onstage… what they had been reading and what they were being taught; so we didn’t want to adapt ‘Romeo and Juliet.’ We wanted to do ‘Romeo and Juliet,’” he said.
Another element of keeping it fresh was the swordplay. Satta enlisted Lewis Shaw, a choreographer and prop maker who has worked on Broadway productions. Shaw planned the fights and made all of the heavy steel props the characters wield.
Senior theatre major Ryan Airey, who plays Mercutio, is involved in several of the play’s key fights. He trained in stage combat before getting the part.
“It’s been great working with everybody and fighting with everybody and learning more,” he said.
Casting the play in the spring was also a challenge because Satta had what he called an “embarrassment of riches.”
“We had a lot of students who were more than ready in terms of their talent and their skills to approach the roles,” he said.
Ultimately, the iconic roles went to senior Jon Kevin Lazarus as Romeo and junior Lauren Baker as Juliet. Both students are theatre majors.
Lazarus said he remembers reading through the play (as Romeo, even) in his high school English class.
“Coming back to it now, you’re at a very different place in your life than you were back then, so you start to get whole new understandings of some of the things that just meant different things to you,” he said.
Baker said she relates very strongly to Juliet, and that it wasn’t hard to “find” Juliet in her.
“The challenge now is to go back to the script and look at that she’s saying and find these deeper meanings and find the different facets of her character – that she’s not some lovesick little girl who’s just airy and doesn’t have a care in the world. She’s a warrior,” Baker said.
Baker added that taking on an iconic role like Juliet comes with a big pair of shoes to fill.
“Juliet says some of the most gorgeous lines written by William Shakespeare, and everybody knows them, no matter what country, no matter what age. ‘That which we call a Rose By any other word would smell as sweete.’ Everybody knows that, so everybody will be judging me on that,” she said.
“It’s a little scary, but it’s more just this challenge. I can’t wait for people to see my interpretation and hopefully, they’ll love it.”
Satta said he hopes Towson’s production casts the Shakespearean classic in a new light.
“I hope the audience is excited by what they see,” he said. I hope that they recognize the people and the behaviors and the problems and the struggles onstage as things that they encounter in their own life and see in modern day.”

A new hot sport on the Towson campus has student athletes wielding sticks, chasing players and throwing balls. It’s not football. It’s not soccer. It’s not field hockey.

The sticks are brooms, the balls are Quaffles and the game is Quidditch.

Freshman theater majors Eva Hiatt and Erin Boots came up with the idea of bringing the Hogwarts pastime from the pages of the “Harry Potter” novels to Burdick Field during their freshman orientation.

“It started out as a joke,” Boots said.

The idea started brewing, then the pair saw students in the Center for the Arts playing a game called Marauder’s Mayhem, which Boots said has its players wandering the halls with wands.

“We’re turning this school into Hogwarts. This school is Hogwarts. We have people running around the CFA with wands, so we might as well play Quidditch,” Boots said.

From there, the pair got to work.

“We spent a day shopping at the dollar store, Home Depot, Target, Wal-Mart, Toys’R'Us, a sports equipment store. At one point I think we went into a grocery store looking for random things like duct tape and golf balls.”

Many hours of work and $141 in supplies later, they had most of the makeshift gear they needed, including hula hoops and poles.

In the “Harry Potter” books and films, Quidditch is a high-flying game played with flying broomsticks. The game Hiatt and Boots are trying to organize is more down-to-earth.

“There are certain things you have to modify because it’s a Muggle sport, because it is Muggle Quidditch, not real Quidditch. You can’t do magic,” Boots said.

The Muggle version of Quidditch is a mix of football, soccer, dodge ball and hide-and-seek.

The Snitch, a small winged ball in the books and films, is a golf ball in a sock attached to the pants of a “Snitch runner.” The runner can run anywhere, even off the field. The rules apply very loosely to the runner.

“If the Snitch wanted to, he could pretty much punch out the Seekers to prevent them from catching [him],” Hiatt said.

Towson would not be the first school with a Quidditch league. In 2005, a group of students at Middlebury College in Vermont adapted the game for Muggles. The students later formed the Intercollegiate Quidditch Association, which formed standard rules and now comprises more than 100 schools. The association even sponsors world cups. Boots said she doesn’t see Towson’s Quidditch league getting there quite yet, and added that they changed the regulation game a bit for safety and other reasons.

“We adapted some of the rules and twisted them around and made them our own because [of us], as I said, being theatre kids and having imaginations of our own,” she said.

Their idea is gaining steam. More than 80 people joined a Facebook group Boots and Hiatt started, and an informational meeting they held Wednesday afternoon in the CFA attracted more than 40 students.

Junior art education major Emily Dennis found out about the meeting on Facebook.

“I’ve been wanting to do something active sport-wise, but all the other sports on campus are really intense and competitive, and I just wanted to do something fun, and I like ‘Harry Potter,’” Dennis said.

Marina Ybarra, a freshman theatre major, energetically described herself as a “cheerleader” for the effort to get Towson Quidditch off the ground.

“I’m a really positive person, and I want people to get more involved with Quidditch in a positive way,” Ybarra said. “[My friends and I] like ‘Harry Potter,’ we like Quidditch, so why not be just excited about something here at the school?”

Hiatt and Boots said they want to form at least two teams of seven to 14 people. Hiatt said their motivation is “how much fun we’re going to have, how much fun we know we’re going to have.

“It’s not necessarily the books of the “Harry Potter” stories,” she said. “We know because of J.K. Rowling’s imagination mixed with our imaginations mixed with everyone else’s imaginations.”

Hiatt and Boots said they are considering the idea of the group affiliating with the Student Government Association and the Intercollegiate Quidditch Association. Taking the lead on such a project is daunting, but Hiatt said they’re up to it.

“We are pretty dedicated, organized people. Maybe not organized, but dedicated and persistent, more or less,” she said.

Boots said she thinks of Quidditch as a release and an escape for stressed students.

“What more can be enjoyable than running around with a broom between your legs throwing things at people?” she said

Q.D. Thompson is an unlikely athlete. In team pictures, he sticks out as the shortest of the bunch. At a relatively scrawny 5’6” and 110 pounds, his size did not stop him from making All-State and All-Southern teams in soccer and basketball, or from being a contender in track and field and baseball.

That was in 1942. Today, his name is on the athletic wall of fame in Towson Center. Thompson, now 88, is many years removed from that athlete. He’s shrunk a few inches. He uses a walker to get around. One thing hasn’t changed, however: He never stopped playing for the Tigers.

Quinton Donald Thompson was born in Blue Ridge Mountains near Roanoke, Virginia, in 1921. He grew up as one of 14 children on a 154-acre farm, helping out there until the Depression hit.

“Everything was wiped out. I mean everything,” he said.

They moved to Sparks, Md., to become tenant farmers on a large dairy farm. Every day, Thompson would wake up at 3:30 a.m. to milk 16 cows before going to school. In the late 1930’s, he started at what was then called Maryland State Teachers College at Towson.

In high school, he wanted to play sports, but was often turned down by coaches who said he was just too small. He became jaded with athletics, but when he got to Towson, where other coaches saw Thompson’s size, one saw speed. The coach’s name was Donald “Doc” Minnegan. He approached Thompson during his sophomore year.

“He said, ‘Thompson, I want you to come out for the teams.’ I said, ‘Doc, I can’t. I gotta go home and milk the cows.’ He said, ‘I want you to come out for the teams.’ Lord have mercy, I didn’t have transportation. My stepmother agreed to milk my cows for me. So I went out for the teams,” Thompson said.

Minnegan, who died in 2002 at the age of 99, served as athletic director from 1927 to 1941. To many Towson students, he’s better known as “Doc,” the namesake of, among other things, the football field and the beloved mascot. To Thompson, however, he was simply “Coach.”

“I made the soccer team, I made the basketball team, I made the baseball team,” he said. “And that crazy man, he never took nothing for excuses. He kept me after practice for hours on end. Corner kicks, penalty kicks, dribbling. The same thing with basketball. I was the best two-handed shooter you ever saw.”

He stuck out in team pictures – other players towered over him – but that wouldn’t stop him.

By his junior year, he had moved down to Towson full-time. He paid for his tuition and books with a 22.5 cents-an-hour job at the Texaco gas station on the corner of York Road and Burke Avenue, where Starbucks is today.

He went on to continued success in sports as the captain of the basketball and soccer teams and the second baseman on the baseball team. To today’s student athletes, it may seem odd that one student could be involved in so many sports, but Minnegan was doing the most with what he had. Thompson still has the picture of his graduating class. He was one of just eight men in a class of 109 graduates. There were no male or co-ed dorms at the time. The men lived and dressed in the power plant. They trained in the basement of Richmond Hall. They played their games on the field where Prettyman and Scarborough halls sit today.

Minnegan had wanted Thompson to go on to Springfield College, his own alma mater, for a degree in physical education.

“Well, Pearl Harbor [happened],” he said. “I graduated in 1942; I knew where I was headed.”

Thompson enlisted, thinking that if he didn’t, he would probably get drafted. He signed up for training to be an officer in any agency he could find: Army, Navy, Coast Guard, Air Force.

He was turned away.

“And they just laughed at me because I only weighed, at that time, I guess about 115,” he said.

But not much later, he got the call. By August 1942, he was shipped out for training. He was stationed in the Great Lakes, in Jacksonville, Fla., and on a patrol squadron in Norfolk, Va. He spent time as a radio gunner in a PB2Y gunner aircraft. After a while, he gained weight and reapplied. His persistence paid off.

“I got up, I stepped on the scales. ‘Oh lord, lord…’ 124 and I had to weigh 132. I had eaten bananas, I’d drunk water, I peed. But anyway, I knew I was probably going to have to pack up and leave,” he said.

But as he finished and went through a final evaluation, a vice admiral took a look at Thompson, noted his size, but decided to give him a shot as a communications officer anyway. He was shipped to Seattle and spent two years on the USS Enterprise aircraft carrier as a communications officer. He said he sometimes considered how lucky he was to avoid a hot combat zone.

“I can only think about what I was, if you want to say, fortunate,” Thompson said. “Some of them are still pushing up roses. But I guess I was fortunate.”

He came home in 1947, taught for three years at the McDonogh School in Owings Mills and was soon recalled by the Navy for the Korean War, serving for another three years in Washington state and later in Sydney. He made close friendships with soldiers from around the world, some of whom he still keeps in touch with today.

He said he owes his military success to Minnegan, his “second father,” and Towson, his second home. Minnegan, too, answered the call to serve. The Army sent him to Europe to establish physical fitness programs for servicemen. The two men often exchanged letters during the war.

“I would go into the lavatory [to read the letters] after hours,” Thomspon said. “I would sit there and cry like a baby.”

After his tours of duty, Thompson went back into education. He took a job as the headmaster of the middle division of the McDonogh School in Owings Mills and worked there for 35 years, retiring in 1985.

He also spent time during his career as president of the Towson University Alumni Association and president of the local Phi Delta Kappa chapter, among other things.

But even after retiring from McDonogh, he didn’t really retire. Instead, he went to work for Towson, mostly on a volunteer basis, as a development officer and member of the board of the Towson University Foundation, which handles University fundraising. He has been involved with the school and the alumni association since 1953. In 2004, the University marked his 50 years of volunteer service by establishing a $50,000 scholarship fund in his honor.

By his own math, Thompson estimated he has raised or helped raise $14.2 million for the University and helped create over 100 scholarships, including three he and his family established. Much of this money was raised through phone-a-thons and face-to-face visits.

Some of these relationships become more personal. Thompson recalled Beulah Price, an older alum whom his family “adopted.” She had no living family except her sister Naomi, whom she hadn’t seen in years. He and his family took her to doctor visits, appointments and shopping. She became a member of the family. Thompson said he even tried to reunite her with her sister, but Naomi died ten days before they were going to meet.

“She died with nobody else to look after her,” Thompson said.

When Price passed away, the family held a private service for her.

She left the University $1,000,000. There are now scholarships in her name in the colleges of education, fine arts and liberal arts. But Thompson didn’t do it for the money or the recognition.

“Story of my life in a nutshell, because if I can’t be of any help to anyone anymore, then my time’s up,” he said.

By the mid ‘90s, he slowed down. He moved into Edenwald Retirement Community in 1994. But even there, he never stopped working. He has served as the president of the community’s residence association and sits on their board of trustees. He helped establish a scholarship there, too, to help Edenwald employees and their children afford a college education. In nine years, the scholarship has given 500 people more than $1 million to help pay for tuition. He calls the feat “absolutely miraculous.”

He also kept in touch with Minnegan through all those years, visiting him in his last days at Gilchrist Hospice Care in Towson.

“The last time he knew who I was, I sat down and cried for half an hour and then I left and got home and got a phone call and he had died ten days short of 100,” Thompson said.

Thompson, who had become a close friend of the family, gave Minnegan’s eulogy. Then he sat on a committee to find donors to name the field house room at the newly-renamed Johnny Unitas Stadium. They raised $50,000 and named it the Minnegan Room. It was another way of saying thanks. To this day, he still gets a little bit emotional when talking about his coach.

“He gave me the motivation to do anything I wanted to do, because he said if you want it badly enough, there’s always a way.”

So in recognition of what Minnegan gave him, Thompson continues to pay it forward to future generations of Towson students.

“I always had a very rewarding life, not only for me but I hope for the benefit of other people too, because if they won’t appreciate it, then it’s worthless to me,” he said.