Hurricane
Florence
Predicted to
Make Landfall
Tomorrow
THE MEREDITH
HERALD
September 12, 2018
IN THIS ISSUE
NEWS
Bigs & Littles Reveal Revived
Voting Local
Durham Pride
Study Abroad Fair
A&E
Review: Blackkkansman
Upcoming Concerts
Unhelpful Hurricane Hints
OPINIONS
Book to Movie Comparison: To
All the Boys I've Loved
Plant Blindness
Silent Sam Has Been Dismounted
Huma Hashmi, Staff Writer
What's Your Calling?
By Olivia Slack and
Kristin Morin
Your answer could be, as it is
for many freshmen entering college,
that you’re not sure. It’s a lot to ask of
freshman to already have a career in
mind, much less a career that they
know they’ll love enough to qualify
as a “calling.” Meredith College’s 2018
summer reading book sought to offer
some advice to readers about how to
find their own calling through real
stories told by people who’ve found
theirs.
This year’s book. Callings,
was compiled by StoryCorps founder
David Isay. The book is comprised
of transcribed interviews that detail
how some people have managed to
find their calling in life and turn it
into a career.
According to Dr. Steven
Benko, one of Meredith’s Associate
Professor of Religious and Ethical
Studies, Callings “speaks to that
idea that work is meaningful.” He
noted that there’s been a lot of focus
recently on how college prepares
students for careers not only by
educating them but by showing them
what kinds of careers are available.
Benko said that Callings emphasizes
this message and that freshmen
should take from reading the book
that “[finding your calling] is work.
That these careers that these people
engaged in didn’t just happen to
them.”
Dr. Christina Romanelli, an
English instructor at Meredith who
lead summer reading discussion
groups, commented that Callings
was a different kind of summer
reading book, one that was “really
good at being inspiring and a positive
conversation starter.” She thought
that the book helps students feel
“empowered to think broadly about
what a calling is.” According to
Romanelli, the book was accurate
in showing that sometimes it
On the night of Aug. 20,
protesters tore down the “Silent
Sam” Confederate monument at
the University of North Carolina-
Chapel Hill, the statue being a
focus of protests since at least 1968
in response to the assassination of
Martin Luther King Jr., although,
calls for its removal came earlier
published in an op-ed from the Daily
Tar Heel in March of 1965. According
to UNC campus police estimates, the
university has spent $393,000 dollars
between July 2017 and July 2018 alone
on its security.
Though the Civil War was
long over by the time the status was
commissioned in 1908, the ideology
behind it carried over Confederate
sentiments . When industrialist and
Confederate State veteran Julian
Carr spoke at the 1913 unveiling of the
statue then known as the “Soldiers
Monument”, he made its intended
symbolism clear. The statue, which
earned the nickname “Silent Sam”
in the 1950s, was commissioned
by the United Daughters of the
Confederacy, and served as an
emblem of “the welfare of the Anglo
Saxon race,” Carr orated. He stressed
that although the Confederacy was
defeated, “the cause for which they
fought is not lost.” Carr offered
a personal anecdote as well. He
recalled during his speech at his
alma mater, he had, in the weeks
immediately after the end of the Civil
War, personally “horse-whippjedj a
negro wretch until her skirts hung in
shreds” for offending a white woman
on Franklin Street.
Silent Sam on July 13, 2018
Photo Courtesy of JASMIN HERRERA
Since then, the protests
against Silent Sam and the ideology
it represents have long been present,
ebbing and waning. However, in the
last few years, neo-confederates have
used the statue as as a rallying point,
ushering in a new wave of anti-racism
activism and protesting.
In October 2015, when
members of The Real Silent Sam
Coalition placed a black garment
on the barrel of the statue’s gun,
the cloth symbolized the skirt that
Julian Carr hung in shreds after the
“horsewhippjing].” Then, between
30 and 40 members of the coalition
marched from McCorkle Place to
Memorial Hall where they briefly
disrupted the University Day
proceedings to decry the memorial to
Confederate soldiers of the university
and racism they believed persists on
campus.
The coalition says “the
monument is falsely represented” as
honoring students, was erected “at
the height of North Carolina’s white
supremacy movement to incite fear
in the newly freed black population”
and makes many students feel
unwelcome on campus.
The dramatic demonstration
on Aug. 20 followed decades of
controversy and protest at the
university that had accelerated in the
last year after the fatal eruption of
racist violence in Charlottesville, Va.
where at Unite the Right rally, anti
racist protester Heather Heyer was
stuck and killed by a neo-Nazi driver.
After Silent Sam’s toppling,
according to Thomas Goolsby, a
member of the UNC System Board
of Governors, the monument will be
reinstalled within 90 days of its take
down.
On Aug 23., Goolsby said
in his Youtube video, “We will
Continued on pg. 3
takes a while to find your calling, as
demonstrated by her own winding
journey to becoming an English
professor, and that message is valuable
for students. She noted that “there’s a
certain amount of knowing one’s self
in finding a calling and knowing what’s
important to you in finding a calling,”
and that college can often be the ideal
place to take time to do that.
In addition to reading Callings,
on Sept. 5 freshmen were required to
attend “Meredith Callings; A Panel
of Powerful Women,” a program that
showcased faculty, students, and
alumnae who shared their experiences
with finding their callings. They related
how they got to where they are now
and offered advice, including focusing
on “fulfillment potential vs. earning
potential,” as the panel’s trustee
representative Adrienne Cole said.
Following the program, freshmen who
had attended offered their impression of
the event and the book. Adeline Rhodes
and Savana Mitchell agreed that it was
“nice hearing other peoples’ stories,”
and Faith Beverly added that the event
was “inspiring” and that she felt that
attending the panel and reading
the book would help “guide [us] to
find [our calling].” The reception to
Callings itself was also positive: as
Anna Wisniewski said. Callings was
a book that “[she] actually related
to, because [she’s] undecided”
unlike other summer reading books
she’s had to read in the past. This
sentiment was shared by many
students. Kaitlyn Galdamez gleaned
from her reading that you should “do
what you want to do in life, and not
just because of the money.”
Overall, reactions to Callings
were positive on the parts of both
professors and students, with
everyone generally agreeing that
it was inspiring and gave a great
message about how to apply your
college experience to finding your
ideal career.
Meredith v. Guilford,
Meredith v. Stockton
By Mimi Mays,
Associate Editor
At Meredith’s first home
soccer game of the season on
Sat, Sept 8, our nimble Avenging
Angels battled both the humidity
and Guilford College, but emerged
victorious on both counts.
The Saturday sun was no
match for #18, Madison Thompson,
who scored the first goal of the
game for Meredith in the first frame.
Guilford soon struck back with
a point in the second frame, and
just when it looked as though the
match would end in a tie, #22 Ansley
Bucknam bested the Guilford goalie
to make the last goal of the game.
The Angels’ 2-1 win was rewarded
with cheers and a picnic with their
families in the shade.
“We’re very proud of our
team; they fought hard the whole
game,” remarked Coach Paul Smith.
“A lot of teams, when you’re up i-o,
and the other team comes back i-i,
they may fold,” he explained, “but we
did not. I’m very proud of the whole
team.”
The Angels played Stockton
University on the afternoon of the
9th, and after a long two frames and
two overtimes, the match resulted in
a I-I tie. Jessica Wallace, #5, scored
for Meredith near the end of the first
frame.
Today’s match in Roanoke
has been postponed due to weather,
so the Angels’ next matchup will be
a home game versus Emory & Henry
College on Sep 18.