Newspapers / Meredith College Student Newspaper / Nov. 12, 2003, edition 1 / Page 5
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5 CAMrUS FEATURES Angels that serve The Herald's weekly column on service at Meredith NINA BORUM Staff Columnist positive impres sion on Loftis. He told her about how he had once found himself in great need of a Good Samaritan. After his hard Service is something that comes naturally to sopho more Elizabeth Loftis. She has been a very active angel at Meredith with many extracurricular activi ties, but service Is a big part of her life. Loftis was drawn to Circle K (a col lege service organization) because of its worthy objectives of service, lead ership and fellowship. She feels that Circle K does a great job of meeting these objectives. Being a part of the Circle K club has allowed her many opportunities to do what she does best. Loftis, along with about 40 other college students fix>m local universities, gathered at the Durham Good Samaritan Inn last Saturday. In participating with the Circle K monthly divisional project they planned to assist in land scaping. Unfortunately, the weather did not permit so they decided to organize and sort donated toys for three hours. These toys will be available for parents who cannot afford Christmas gifts for their children. The director of the Good Samaritan program left a experience on the streets he commented that the spirit of God lead him to Ithe Samaritan Ministries and he has been involved for several years now. Loftis says that this experience was ftilfilling because she knows that children will benefit fix>m her three hours of work. Christmas holds a special place in her heart and she feels that all children should experience the joy that Christmas brir^s. Loftis plans on taking advantage of future volun teer opportunities with the Good Samaritan Inn. According to her "it was a very positive experience and the people were so grateful" Loftis encourages others to think of volun teering with the Good Samaritan Inn. "The workers there love what they do and truly lend a helping hand to those in need. It was a great experi ence," stated Loftis. If you are interested in volunteering with this organization, visit ht^://www.durhamrecue- mission.org/ for more infor mation. Pulitzer photograph exhibit gets good review If you would like to be fea- tured in this column or if you know someone serving the community contact Nina at 760-2121 or BorumN@meredith. edu. ROBIN MACKLIN Contributing Writer I was told beforehand that the exhibit would be "moving", but that did not prepare me for the emo tional journey ofNC State's Pulitzer Prize collection that spans five decades. As my ftiend and I rode the elevator on the way to the exhibit, we met a young woman with two children in tow. We asked if she had seen the exhibit yet and she said she had, but that it was unsuitable for the kids to see. I estimated her chil dren to be about six and eight and wondered if she was being overly protective of them or if the photos were really that graphic. We didn't follow the order of the exhibit, so we hit the '80s section first. There were scenes that I clearly remembered from my childhood, such as Baby Jessica being retrieved fiom the well and German teenagers with mohawks and chisels hack- ing elatedly away at the Berlin wall. As we wan dered through the section, memories flooded back to me of some of the most traumatic events of that decade, moments that shaped our Nation and those around us. If you ask anyone who knows me well, I do not cry very easily nor very often, but over half of the exhibit made my eyes water and at times my knees to buckle. Just look ing at the human despair in some of the photos made me want to reach out and touch the people in them, hold them, save them from themselves. One of these was entitled "The Graveyard" by Michael duCilte, a photographer who spent a significant part of his career chronicling the lives of drug addicts. His photo was of a beauti ful black woman holding a smoking crack vial. It was heartbreaking. A second photo depicted a tiny African girl curled in a ball of despair on hard packed dirt. She had been crawling toward the food center and was having trouble making it there. Behind her crouch es a vulture, waiting for her inevitable death. The pho tographer had been instructed not to touch any of the people to avoid con tracting disease, and he honored this instruction at the time but always regret ted it. A few years later, he committed suicide. There are some uplifting photographs, but even they are tinged with sadness. John H. White's "Life in Chicago" captures two chil dren miming and laughing across the lawn that stretch es in front of their home- the most notorious housing project in Chicago. Another beautiful shot is of the four-woman team fix)m Nigeria after winning the Bronze cup for a track and field event in Barcelona. Their faces are so animated and ecstatic, hugging and laughing and cheering each other, but it left us disquiet ed. You would never see Americans celebrating so much for the Bronze, if anything they would be dis appointed. Another fascinating theme that I noticed was the numerous photographs containing an American flag, though not in the way you might think. Everyone has seen the infamous "Old Glory goes up on Mt. Suribachi" by Joe Rosenthal. There is a statue depicting the same in our Nation's capital. The pic ture shows American sol diers planting the flag after a long hard struggle. Now look at another "Old Glory" photo. In this picture, taken in front of Boston's City Hall, a group of white Boston University students circle a white male flog ging a black male with the American flag. No one tries to intervene. Look at the wall to the right and you'll see another group of con fused "patriots". This shot is taken of a protest against busing black students into white schools at the begin ning of the desegregation effort. Protestors hold signs with the American flag on them, flanked by slogans such as "Segregation is American". The flag shots left us wondering if any of the people in these photo graphs know what Aat flag really stands for. Did they ever look back and recog nize the contradiction? I looked around at the faces of the exhibit's visi tors. I saw a mixture of impassive, sad, confused, shocked and angry visages. Some visitors even brought their children. One boy, about ten or eleven years old was staring at a picture that had almost made me sit doAvn and weep. His face was contorted with shock. I could tell what he was thinking- who would do such a horrible thing to those children? The photo graph was a group of Vietnamese children, about the boy's age, rutming down the road naked and screaming. Their clothes had melted away when the napalm hit. Will the parents of this boy explain to him America’s involvement in that horror? Or any of the others depicted? See Pulitzer Page 6
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