Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture

For this assignment I visited the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture. I have been to the Stone Center before to hear several speakers, and I had a class there when I was a freshman. I had not, however, until this trip spent time looking around. I went to an exhibit that I enjoyed that is not very well advertised on campus. I also spent time reading the plaques and learning about the history of the building and about Dr. Sonja Haynes. Dr. Stone was born in Chicago in 1938 and received her BA in social science from Sarah Lawrence in 1959. She received her Ph.D. in history and philosophy of education from Northwestern University in 1975 and then cam to UNC where she became a professor of Afro-American studies. Dr. Stone did a lot to establish a strong Black Student Movement on campus and the building was dedicated in her honor in 1988.

The center has many different uses today. There are undergraduate classes and recitations held in the building, but mainly it serves as the place for speakers, events, exhibits and collaboration.

I decided to categorize the Carolina Basketball fan page entries by gender. I thought this would be an interesting page to study because gender and sport interest tend to have a correlation. I read what men and women said on the wall and the following is what I found out:

-More men posted than women
-Women posts were shorter
-Mens post seemed to be more based in specific events
-Women were positive/encouraging
-Men did more "trash talking"

While there were, overall, differences between male and female posts, these differences were not extreme. Before coding the entries I thought there were going to be more differences.

Harvard's Implicit Association Test (IAT)

Today, I took Harvard's Implicit Association Test (IAT) on sexuality. "This IAT requires the ability to distinguish words and symbols representing gay and straight people. It often reveals an automatic preference for straight relative to gay people."

There are multiple IAT tests ranging from subjects such as gender and race to weapons, religion and age. I suggest checking them out (I plan on doing more than one):

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/selectatest.html

At the beginning of the test I filled out some information regarding my feelings toward people of different sexual orientation. Next, I performed a test where the computer output a word or image and I had to press the letter "E" (left category) or "I" (right category) depending on which category I thought it fell in. At first, gay was on the left, straight was on the right. And then gay and bad were paired (still on the left) and straight and good were paired (still on the right). Then, on the third and forth test, gay and straight were switched from the "E" (left) category to the "I" (right) category, and gay was paired with the word good and straight with the word bad. The test ended with questions about your ethnicity, gender, sexual preference, where you grew up, etc.

My outcome was:

"Your data suggest little to no automatic preference between Straight People and Gay People."

The overall data showed:





The hardest part of the test was responding immediately without taking time to think. The hardest part for me was remembering which category was on which side. I think it is an interesting test, however, because you do have to react immediately and associate words and images to the categories of gay, straight, good and bad, which you might not usually feel inclined to put in one category or the other.

The Story with Dick Gordon: Recording Friends

The Story with Dick Gordon is produced by North Carolina Public Radio and distributed by American Public Media. You can find the show at http://thestory.org.

On February 5, 2010, I listened online to "Recording Friends" which had aired earlier that day.

The following is a brief synopsis:

"Lee Payne, Jon Biscoe, Frank Cha and Tom O'Halloran played in bands together for years. But as they got older, life drew the four of them in different directions and to different parts of the world. Jon was about to become a father. Lee went to serve in Afghanistan. But then Jon decided to throw out an idea. Each guy was asked to write an original song, then email it, complete with chords and lyrics to the group. Everyone then recorded their own version of each song. The four friends reunited recently to listen to the songs. Lee, Jon and Frank join Dick to talk about their new media music project - and the unexpected impact it had on their friendship."

http://thestory.org/archive/the_story_966_Recording_Friends.mp3

The story was well produced and easy to listen to. It was an interesting mix of personal accounts of the four friends' experiences and narration by Dick Gordon. There was also a nice mix of music and dialogue which helped keep the listener's attention. My only critique of this broadcast is the length of time. I think that the story should have been edited more tightly.

The aspects of this piece that I should keep in mind when producing my story on the Safe Zone program at UNC are: diverse perspectives (multiple voices) that tell the story; effective use of narration to fill in the gaps of comprehension between voices and replace wordy explanations; and tasteful use of music in transitions.