Whether you're singin' along, groovin' by yourself or just studying in the library, we'll catch you with the MUSIC THAT MOVES YOU
Each year students make the legendary walk through the Campanile, down The Hill and into the real world. We're here to check in on them.
Listener: Wayne Keeton,
Buckklein junior
Tune: "Untitled" by
Emery, a Christian post-
hardcore band
Action: Heading to his
accounting lecture
He says: "It's clean, but
at the same time it's got
hard roots."
Listener: Erik Dupuis,
Lake Bluer III, Junior
Tune:"Something to Talk
About" by Badly Drawn
Boy
Action: Waiting for the bus on Wescoe Beach
He says: "I don't know how I'd classify it — it's like a soft rock. It's very relaxing."
GRAD CHECK
Listener: Tara Burkett, Overland Park freshman Tune:"Welcome to the Black Parade" by My Chemical Romance Action: Heading to the Kansas Union to study She says:"It's kind of darker alternative. I really like the lyrics and the emotion behind the story."
Listener: Ann Marie Harris, Jenks, Okla., senior Tune: "Waiting on the World to Change" by John Maver
Action: Going to The Underground for lunch
She says: "I like the rhythm of his songs, and he's pretty laid back. I like the message, this one in particular; it's hard to change things when you're not the one in power, even if something's wrong."
Frank Tankard
Laura Wexler
Year: 1997
Hometown: Baltimore
Degree: Master of Arts in English
Back in the Day: One memory Wexler has from her time as an aspiring writer at the University of Kansas is seeing legendary beat generation writers William S.Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg appear together during a festival for Burroughs's art in 1996, less than a year before they both died.
Some of the most influential classes Wexler took at the University included cultural studies classes with Cheryl Lester, director of the American
studies program,and a class with now-retired American studies professor Dennis Domer about the homespun architecture of Kansas,which included a driving tour of the state.
Why she's a big deal: Wexler wrote a book, Fire in a Canebrake: The Last Mass Lynching in America, that was published in 2003 to national acclaim. It was about a lynching of four young blacks — two men, two women — in 1946 in Walton County, Ga. The crime stands as the last known lynching of its size in the United States.
Wexler had recently moved to Athens, Ga., in 1997 when she heard about the unsolved, decades-old lynching. She initially decided to write an article about the crime, but when she started interviewing people she quickly learned that she had discovered an important, untold story that could be developed into a book. "People had a lot of ideas about what happened, but no one had collected the facts," she says."So I decided to do that."
Today: Wexler is a senior editor at Style magazine in Baltimore. She also teaches creative non-fiction at Johns Hopkins University and Goucher College
Earlier this year, she and a friend founded the Stoop Storytelling Series, a series of performances in which seven people tell true, personal stories on a theme. A couple of themes so far have included On the Road: Tales About Traveling Anywhere, Somewhere, and Nowhere At All, and, for Halloween, Scary Stories: Tales About Fear.
Wexler says finding people with interesting stories isn't difficult."It's a continuation of a lot of the same things I've been doing as a non-fiction writer," she says.
She is also researching the pioneering work in sex change surgery at Johns Hopkins University in the 1960s, and might develop the topic into a book.
For more information about Wexler, visit www.laurawexler.com or www.stoopstorytelling.com.
Frank Tankard
06> JAYPLAY 11.09.2006
STUDENT LABORATORY
10> JAYRYAL 8003,50.74