Mirror - Vol. 39, No. 18 - February 19, 2014

              THE MIRROR Student newspaper Week of February 19,2014 Vol. 39, Iss. 18
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The Fairfield Mirror
Salvatore Trifilio/The Mirror
About 80 students and faculty packed the presentation room in the Aloysius P. Kelley Center to capacity on Tuesday, Feb. 18 to listen to Tom Dewolf and Sharon Morgan give a presentation on race.
Putting slavery in perspective generations later
By Angela Sammarone
Copy Editor
Tom DeWolf and Sharon Mor-gan
arrive at Richmond, Va., their
last stop on a road trip through 21
states spanning 6,000 miles. Out-side
the Manchester Docks on the
James River, DeWolf wants to show
Morgan the Slave Trail, which he
saw two years earlier with col-leagues
from Coming to the Table.
But Morgan, appearing in-stantly
disturbed, refuses. She ex-presses
her horror, mentioning
the darkness of the canopy of trees
above, the blood that had been
shed on the very ground she would
step on. Morgan's discomfort was
palpable, but she would go and
partake in what would be another
stop of her healing journey from
the trauma of the legacy of slavery.
"I look through the tunnel of
time and recoil at the absolute ago-ny
of the people who were brought
to this place, stripped of their hu-manity,
and reduced to beasts of
burden," Morgan said of her expe-rience
at the Slave Trail.
DeWolf, a white male and de-scendant
of the largest slave-own-ing
family in US history, and Mor-gan,
a black female and descendant
of a line of slaves from both sides of
her family, compiled their travels,
dialogue, opinions and hardships
in their coauthored novel, "Gather
at the Table."
DeWolf and Morgan under-went
a three year journey, chroni-cling
their experiences together as
the son of a slave trade and daugh-ter
of slavery, animating their story
for Fairfield students and faculty at
the jam-packed Aloysius P. Kelley
Center on Tuesday night. Pictures,
film clips, road trip footage and an-imated
reenactments of their time
spent together brought the dia-logue
of race to the forefront of ev-eryone's
mind as the audience lis-tened
to the authors' "meaningful
platonic relationship with someone
of the 'other' side."
Sophomore Yenny Rua said,
"Reading the book beforehand, it
was powerful seeing the clips and
pictures they provided. It brought
their story to life."
Freshman Tyler Paci agreed
with Rua, and said, "It was great
how they were able to incorporate
all backgrounds into their story
and make it so everyone could
make a personal connection, not
just if you are black or white."
Before DeWolf and Morgan
even met, they each expressed their
own interests in genealogy and dis-cussions
about racism.
Morgan grew up in Chica-go,
though her family is from the
South - Mississippi and Alabama.
In 1969, the year her son was born,
Morgan first became interested in
genealogy. "I wanted to find out
where I came from and provide
READ RACISM ON PAGE 4
Contributed by Tyler Meyer
Senior Julian Focareta hits a rail at the United States Collegiate Ski and
Snowboard Association N.J. Conference final regular season competition
held at Hunter Mountain during the weekend of Feb. 8.
READ SKI TEAM BRINGS EDGE TO FAIRFIELD ON PAGE 16
Fairfield.edu is still a work in progress
By Robert Hagstrom
Assistant News Editor
In the three weeks since its launch,
the new Fairfield University website has
shown features that have strongly dif-ferentiated
it from the older, more fa-miliar
website.
A Fairfield Mirror poll of 62 votes
showed fhat^ince its release, 52 percent
of students like the new website as op-posed
to 48 percent that don't.
The website cost over $200,000,
which will be paid over three years,
according to Catherine O'Donnell, di-rector
of marketing for academics and
admission.
The new website launched on Jan.
24 after around a year of planning and
articulating by the university faculty
and staff who hired two outside website
development companies to complete
the project.
One of the main features of the
new website is that it is now mobile
friendly. A central aspect the university
wanted to have with the new website,
O'Donnell said was to be "compatible
with all mobile devices."
"I am happy with it. I think it's a
lot quicker and easier to navigate and
find what you are looking for," said Alex
Morgan '17. "It's a better presentation of
Fairfield online."
The planning for the new website
started in the fall of 2012, according to
O'Donnell. She said the university put
out a Request for Proposals where fac-ulty,
staff, administrators and a steering
committee searched for six companies
to lead this project.
"It is definitely a new outlook. It
is revitalized and much more modern,"
said Keniel Brown '17. "It seems more
attractive to look at and you can still
find everything you need on it."
The two companies that were cho-sen,
160 Over 90 and Terminal Four,
were essential in helping Fairfield re-lease
the new website.
A central reason behind the new
website, according to O'Donnell, was
that it was time for a change. "Our uni-versity
had outgrown the old website,"
she said.
Before making the transition to
the new website, the older one was in
place for around five to six years, said
Deirdre Bennett, assistant director of
student affairs communications.
According to O'Donnell, 160
Over 90, a company that had previously
worked with other higher education in-stitutions
along with Nike Tennis, Mer-cedes
Benz and American Eagle, among
others, headed the design element of
the website. Terminal Four was respon-sible
for the infrastructure of the web-site.
The company "hosts and holds the
content of the website," O'Donnell said.
O'Donnell said that 160 Over 90
designed the website to correlate with
the Fairfield community. They based it
on intellectual development, personal
enrichment, and a sense of community.
But their work with Fairfield isn't
over yet.
Read MOST on Page 3
5
1
NEWS:
Professor profile:
Dr. Jay Valentine
Page 3
OPINION:
Attacking 'privilege' reifies
differences
Page 5
THE VINE:
Fulbright scholar recalls
protest in Egypt
Page 8
SPORTS:
Schneider: update on US
hockey
Page 14