Newspapers / Elon University Student Newspaper / July 28, 2010, edition 1 / Page 9
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PAGE 9 11 WEDNESDAY, JULY 28, 2010 STYLE THE PENDULUM Freshman actor plans to attend prestigious performing arts school PHOTO SUBMITTED Rising sophomore Hannah Morayati was accepted into the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, a competitive school in England. Formerty an Elon student, Morayati will transfer to the school to focus on theater. EcJith Veremu Reporter Rising sophomore Hannah Morayati might say dreams come true — at least when it comes to theater. It was in early April when she got accepted to the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, a competitive performing arts school in England. The acting major hadn’t been expecting her acceptance to the English school, but on the morning of April 9, Morayati was in for a surprise when she checked her e-mail in her dorm room. “I got the e-mail and was like ‘I’m just going to open it,’” she said. “The chances of getting in were so slim. I read it the first time and then I jumped out of my bed and knocked on my suitemates’ doors.” Morayati also said that when she told her mother, her mother thought she was injured, because she was crying over the phone. Morayati’s mother attended graduate school in England, so she can relate to the anxiety her daughter is feeling, said Morayati. The Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts was founded and opened in January 1996 after Sir Paul McCartney of the Beatles and Mark Featherstone-Witty collaborated to create a performing arts school. On the school’s website, McCartney says he wanted to save the buUding formerly known as the Liverpool Institute and School of Art and The Liverpool Institute High School for Boys, which he attended as a boy. Featherstone-Witty, on the other hand, wanted to create a school modeled after the New York High School for the Performing Arts in “FAME,” a 1980 movie that focuses on high school students in the performance arts, according to the website. “I'm very excited, because for the first time I will be able to do what I want,” Morayati said. “When you go through middle school, high school and college, you’re only focused on academics, but this is an opportunity for me to finally do what 1 want to.” Morayati first auditioned for the National Unified Auditions during her senior year at Williams High School but didn’t mcike the auditions the first time around. She then reauditioned her freshman year and said that the second audition was more successful than the first. “The auditions went really, really well,” Morayati said. “They remembered me and were open and friendly. They made me feel comfortable.” The move to London will be difficult, Morayati said. In London, she will be considered an international student, which she Sciid will be a different experience, because it will require her to adapt to the English culture. Morayati said that she will have to “get used to the English accent, living standcirds and transportation,” given that she had a car while at Elon and all amenities close. Morayati Scdd she has always wished to study abroad for at least a year and this influenced her to consider the London school even more. “I grew up in North Carolina and have pretty much been here my whole life,” she said. “I’m really excited to lecirn new things about the UK and be able to backpack around Europe and explore.” Morayati said that although she looks forwcird to studying in London and meeting McCartney, she will miss the people she’s met at Elon, including her suitemates, classmates and professors. She also said that the theatre classes she took at Elon have prepared her for the intensive classes she’ll be taking at Liverpool. Summer proves to be busiest time of year for admissions Book chronicles experiences of two Elon freshmen from the past Edith Veremu Reporter School’s out for the summer and students are relaxing, working or interning. But for the Office of Admissions and Financial Planning, the summer is the busiest time of the year. From finalizing decisions regarding incoming first-year students to making decisions about the upcoming academic year, more than 30 Admissions staff members are working hard. An early part of the summer is spent reviewing communications with prospective students, says Greg Zaiser, dean of Admissions. Staff members also answer questions about students’ first inquiries about Elon as well as working with Residence Life and the bursar’s office to finalize housing and tuition decisions, says Francois Masuka, director of international student and faculty scholar services. “A large amount of communication between Residence Life and Admissions,” Zaiser said. As for admission for international students, Masuka adds that he’s been working with students to ensure receipt of their visas by verifying mailing addresses as well as answering questions that international students may have. “These are routine questions that anybody who wants to come here, especially for the first time, has,” Masuka said. “It’s just a matter of explaining to them what they need to do and to make sure they get the proper papers when they come. It’s a collaborative effort and we want to make sure that students are aware of all the services provided to them.” The Office of Admissions expects nearly 1,400 incoming freshmen of which 6 percent are international students, dean Zaiser confirmed. He said the number of international students in the Class of 2014 is a “nice increase compared to the 52 (students) in the Class of 2013.” Admissions staff members also took a few days away from the office. Zaiser said that staff workers attended their annual planning retreat in Seven Lakes, almost two hours away from Elon. During the retreat, staff members engaged in team building exercises while discussing the goals and objectives Admissions has for the 2010-2011 academic year. Among the goals, campus visits and tours will undergo a few changes. Zaiser said that campus tours will become a “more dynamic program.” He also said that Elon is looking to change the way its tours are conducted, to make them less fact-based and more experience-based. During the summer, there are between 20 and 25 student tour guides. Some of these students are taking summer courses at Elon, living on campus or commuting. The Office of Admissions gives numerous tours during the summer. “You come to Elon and it’s Just not a student talking at you,” Zaiser said. “The goal is to provide the best, especially for a family by differentiating the time they spend here from the time they spend at other schools.” Although it is an on-going process, the Office of Admissions plans on unveiling the new structure of its tours soon. Other projects that Admissions has started include planning for open house and game day events this fall. Zaiser added that although the office continues preparing for the Class of 2014, they’ve begun working with the Class of 2015. Once the commitment date of May 1 has passed, Admissions can begin preparations for rising high-school seniors, he explained. Admissions will try to read incoming applications online, Zaiser said. He explained that although only some applications will be read online, others will not, because “it requires a tremendous amount of planning and preconceiving of the process.” “Once we go into the summer, we turn the class off in terms of housing and other areas,” he said. “We’re hosting more than a hundred families regularly on campus.” Cartlin O’Donnell News Editor It’s a story that began almost fifty years ago, set in an era when the Vietnam War was raging and the campus of Elon University was both structurally and academically different. But it’s a story that two Elon freshman from the mid- 1960s find timeless. Stephen Smith and Steve Tindall lived on the same hall, a few doors down from each other, during their freshman year at Elon. “In those days, we always left doors open, so people walked up and down all day long,” Smith said. “We would stop to talk, tell about a book we had read.” While Smith, originally from Annapolis, remciined at Elon for the remainder of his undergraduate work, studying history, Tindall transferred during his sophomore year to the University of Delaware, in his home state, also studying history. For 44 years, the friends remained out of contact until Tindall happened to find Smith’s contact information on the internet while casually searching for old friends from his college years. “When I transferred, I let a lot of things go and closed that chapter at Elon and moved on,” Tindall said. “1 didn’t do a good job of keeping up, but I never forgot the folks or the experience.” When Smith came to visit his family in Annapolis, the two met for lunch and while they shared stories from their time together at Elon, an idea was born. “We were talking and after we talked for a while, 1 just said, ‘are we going to write this down?’ and he said, ‘You know, we ought to,” Smith said. The book, still in the rough draft stage and tentatively titled “Freshman”, will be written by Smith and Tindall in alternating chapters and share the Elon experiences both had, which Tindall said impacted them both greatly “He’s going to give his point of view and I’m going to give my point of view, but it will also cover before I went to Elon and what happened the next year, teachers I had, places I visited, speakers that came to campus, friends I had,” Smith said. Tindall said the book will also examine lifestyles and trends of the time, for example styles of dress or hair. “We look at different things that affected and impacted us,” he said. “We might then say this was what was going on then, this is what I saw, this is what was different to me, this is what’s “IT’S ABOUT CHANGE TOO, WE SEE A LOT OF CHANGE IN WHAT WE’VE DONE AND WHAT’S HAPPENED AND WHAT ELON WAS LIKE AND WHAT IT’S LIKE NOW.” -STEVE TINDALL FORMER ELON UNIVERSITY happened with styles since then. It’s a starting place, and then we can carry that through.” For Smith, going to Elon was his first time away from home, during a time when the country was reaching a state of turmoiL “It was just the beginning of the war in Vietnam,” he said. “We had to wrestle with the fact that they would change our class schedules to try to draft us.” Though Smith said he later wondered if he should have stayed at Elon for the remainder of his college career and had the full experience, he never forgot the time he spent there. “I hope that going away to college is a big event for anybody, a coming of age landmark,” Tindall said. “It was for me. It was leaving behind a lot of things and entering a whole new world, so it was very special.” Smith and Tindall are experienced writers. Tindall has written press releases, newsletters, commercial copy and video scripts, and Smith studied writing at graduate school. While at Elon, he was published in both Colonnades and the STUDENT yearbook and won a prize for fiction in a statewide contest. Smith said he hopes his audience includes anyone who ever had a good experience as a freshman. “My job is to make it relevant to them and help them recall things that happened,” he said. “I would hope that people who graduate from Elon would be interested in it.” Tindall said he hopes it resonates with people, while both amusing and stimulating their thinking and commentary. Though each man’s story ended in a different way, Tindall said he understands that everyone makes choices in life that change things. “It’s about change too, we see a lot of change in what we’ve done and what’s happened, and what Elon was like and what it’s like now,” he said. While Tindall at times has remorse about his decision to leave Elon, Smith said he often regrets the opportunities he didn’t take advantage of while he was a student, including classes he could have done better in and teachers who had interesting stories to share. For example. Smith said he had a Russian history professor who lived through the Russian revolution. “It still amazes me that 1 never raised my hand and never asked questions,” he said. “I would hope (the book) would especially be for people who are about to go to college, to make them aware of the gift that’s been given to them and the wonderful things that will happen if they let them.”
Elon University Student Newspaper
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