THE BEHREND BEACON Urban music off the streets and into the classroom by Monica Eng ChiLago Tribune October 26. 1999 CHICAGO It's a beautiful Sunday afternoon and a group of three white students sit vathered around their African-American teacher in a small sunny room at the Old Town School of Folk Music. A loping, atmospheric heat is streaming out of the boom box in the corner. They bob their heads and tap their feet as they spill words onto the pages of their rhyme hooks. It's a generally laid-back room. hut this exercise creates a certain Final Jeopardy-like tension as the students compose a rhyme against the ticking clock of music. As the heat winds down, the JIIIII, col ce-ui eaulocKeu teacner, who goes by the single name Anacron. asks. "Is ever) body cool'?" They indicate that they are ready to go. The heat kicks in again. Fifteen-year-old Jonah "J=lPlay" Bondurant begins the rhyme circle with his composition. which starts: "Watch me penetrate the senses ... chemical imbalances ..." His rap style rides the heat ‘A.nh complicated cadences and a slight gangsta accent. Wrapping up his rhyme by repeating the last line, the lanky Lane Tech junior kicks it to Anacron, who begins. "This week'stopic is performing Ike/ Including the nutritional facts without the excess jiver ro survke on the stage is an astounding feat in itself/You Must he Ike to engage a pounding heat upon the shelf... - He scents totally at ease with the form. mos Mg his head from side to side with the heat. Next up is Tisa "The Tisanator - Bakheldi. who wears combat boots, leggings, a dress and a sweater. Her pigtails make her look like Mars Ann from Gilligan's Island. She raps softly in a smooth stream and then hands the inxisible mike to Cece. a day trader/aspiring singer/songwr Cece Pap:, a blond in co n se r v alive clres-,, inipro iscs an nitro to her rhythmic rap, explaining that ',he own prepares for in gay student rial by Raad Cawthon Knight-Ridder Nekkspaper-, LARAMIE, \V o. -- Surrounding the Albany County Courthouse. a three story pile 01 sandstone block that sits between doss mown Laramie and the ‘ersity of Wyoming campus, is a chest-hush, dark green plastic fence containing rows of oblong holes. The fencing is the kind usually used to hold hack the snow on ski slopes. But today -- Monday. Oct. 25 -- at the beginning of the trial of Aaron McKinney, 22, who is accused of killing Matthew. Shepard, the tenee is there to hold hack the curious. Prosecutors claim McKinney and Russell Henderson, 22, lured Shepard from a Laramie bar last October with the intent of robbing him. They also say Shepard, who was beaten to death, was targeted because he was gay. "We are prepared for big crowds, but we are not expecting them," said Randy Vickers, a Laramie law enforcement spokesman. Indeed, no one has applied for a permit to demonstrate at the trial and people here hope to avoid scenes such as the one last year, when anti-gay demonstrators descended on Shepard's funeral. From the middle of Grand Avenue in downtown Laramie, one can look south, across the Union Pacific railroad tracks, into the Snowy Mountains. Look north, and the view goes past the university and out across dun-colored, low ranging hills dotted with evergreens. In any direction, the landscape is pure West. On Oct. 6, 1998, prosecutors allege that McKinney and Henderson, after attracting Shepard by pretending to he gay, drove him a mile or so east of town, heat him, pistol-whipped him, and left him tied to a rail fence. Shepard, found comatose and still tied to the fence 18 hours later, had told friends he always wanted to live in Laramie because it was a friendly town. He died Oct. 12. Shepard's killing caused outrage across the country in large part because McKinney and Henderson, whose guilty plea in April led to two life sentences, quickly defended their NATIONAL CAMPUS NEWS wants to join the class so that she can add some texture to a tolk-ruck Christmas alhum she is making She winds down the rhyme. and the \\ hide group smiths and relaxes. Ana rnni commends them all on a joh well dune Rap teacher Anacron reads to his students what he wrote during an exercise on putting thoughts to music. He teaches a course in rap music at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago. "Du you write for Nlastcr of something?“ he asks the 'ley, student. Ccce. ho edits her pocti . riling for her facilit with me.. II a faunal class bawd ❑tiound rap sounds tintismil that's because it is. The /Id 0% , . School c Nen conjectures that it nr,n Ise the first of its kind. But if ~ tdministiatois at the school has c any thing to sa ;Mout it. it won't he the last. It's just one pail of the school's push to e pand notions of folk music and update its ()Het Mg, with more urban arts anti contemporar styles. That has been the nti•,sion old lot )1 • /Id I,)\\ Adoll plogiam and Lip A i i "Juste 'led( Intci 1,",\ ;t1 brutalit h She paid because he made >r\ c, Impromptu incinoi Shcpaid sprang up in gad iteighlikulimid , , in Chicago. Nev.. York and San Fran( Human rights act' ists (loft portraed Shepard as, a mart and Laramie as a place her,: \\,as the inc \ liable product of AinCi my thologiiing ()I thc \.\ seated on a bucking horse. is the state's emblcm. "Blood & Tears: Poems lor Matthew Shepard - V. as puhli,he 1, its tide draM, II 11'0111 a lICW, a l / 4 :0)1111l Shepard's head was blood covered except for a spot where - he'd been crying and the tears v, ent dov.n lie lace. - The hook is tor sale. alone the latest short story collection lion) L Annie Proulx, a National Book AN aid winning author who lives here, at the Grand Newsstand in Laramie. Laramie. a town of 24.0(X) it you count the 10.000 university students, with its coffee shops, vegetarian restaurants. outdoor gear emporiums, and cowhoy salut is a place where it is as likely you ‘\ ill see Birkenstock sandals as co‘thk) . hoots. "If it [Shepard's killingl had happened in New York Cit). nobody would have noticed it,'' said Jack McClenncn, who owns a small shop where he makes and sells potter. "What happened is not t..t hat this tos‘n i, like. People talk about the 'coll hoy mentality' here. But those guys t.kere about as far from cowboys as you can get." Laramie has a palpable sense of isolation. of being a town adrift in a landscape that defines it and, at times, overwhelms it. Only a two-hour dri‘e front Denver, nobody commutes there because eight or 10 times in the ‘‘ inter "ground blizzards'' are created b> the wind whipping across the Laramie Plateau. "The sky will he as blue as it k today but you won't he able to see across the street," McClennen said. — l'he v, hitc-out will only go to about 10 feet up, hut the) will close the gates [across the highways] and you can't get out of here. You're stuck." When that happens. ! Laramie are left to their o\\ ~ t,tll:kl I: 11'2111 .1 1,111 \\ 1111 11111 , 1C , ,L',ICillCd ~LICCeSS 13. AIL( I,t; iN A HL al dance tk. i 11 i PHOTO BY NUCCIO DINU/Zu - r I OCA6O 1 HIBLINF \\ll,l I ,:dc lookinr. rap And I , lcA, I,‘ um) 21- 1 , 1 1.111(1CP;1, , t111,1 1,11,1)CI lik.lll ;tgo And I ,ci! e\ cr Soil', .\lll.ll NIL .11)k )La 25 \ ‘ , 1,1) mu,ic. hut Anacron y,ets. !Hut inu,i I something. t HA( I.lkb second defendant's beating death II 1 , 1 t ~,,r ,LIRI 11,t11()\sccil 11,t , 11 tlic Ilus 1),(1 ( h,t!l AI! 1 .1 k: \ V)ILIIi~ al 111 ,. \ , n,l! Rct!Kto'l 01 111,tork: Plat:C‘, I, !WI k I I),c, pholic .ti ilic l pk)l the Ntairs worn ha,„ thi:c It. Auld thcidc \ 'glass hip IJ hchi it i, ,h,tticrckl. That „ the result k ,t LKll.ttl,)ll V, hen the h" 111 N IZ,.'‘enge !Alt!) )1 pistol. 11%) hh)utr vvMirky l - icttcr now than ! , citric hr shot Cilegoire said. N 1,1111)..), 5hL I ant \\ Buckhorti 111).211( .ts lore - Gregoire, a \ L 1,1,111 110 ils) a fitness )1 " I I I hall him leave with t Ls\ ,) I ‘otild have slopped it. I ~ . otilLln't h.nv let him ;:o with them. - lint Mai SlL.pard left the liuckhunt f„r die I.irc,iiie Lounge, arnall.l ,itLuit of four 01 five nto%\ n I .orainic bars. where he met Nh. K :ad I Icidasoir "r)ne of the !him!, hilt of LingereLll me about it kll, , \\ thy' bartender at the rilegoire ‘,aid. He knew and he didn't stop him \N. oh (110 , ,e !ILIVS.” \• I,k;l• . ,person. He ‘.‘ci L 2.llcd all of pounds. Wyatt Nickuine's attorney. told 1 - 1,1,1.,:c11% , ..1ui,H , , in the trial that they hn~LlAct cd I . )\ ihe national oppu, p i ,ILath brought to the c got to begin by dhdc L i.p.hn , ,..! !he thing, that we have pon;sh ~ : n.‘hody to show the natwnr. hot some dusty old Lo\\ ion," he saki Prosecutor Cal Rcrucha told the .ante jurors that in NlciCinnQ Ilenderson, who are oxpcutcd to test if\ ttainst his partner, NOVEMBER 5, 1999 NIL( 1,11, n 1,-01(1 - this ye,trl and ,;he ,114111CI . Cia Ith .111..\\ 1()IloNAing 11 1 1 111\ R • lIC V ci Child tt , .11 tu t tHit'.. of \AtliIC hind iln liu,klwrn Wl'. lilt 11. I , !iti 1h1,11211 thi ~.0 LuYY rough I.IIC I 1..11c , A \laithe\\ . he was a real \l‘.. I - and European culture. But really it's any kind of music that is created from the heart and soul and is practiced by a large group of people from the same background." For the most part, that "background" s been the African-American urban experience. So does he find it all strange that he is teaching the class to a group of white students'? "I don't think it's strange at all because I feel like a lot of people are interested in hip-hop because it is soniething they don't know about," Anacron says. "They are interested in learning what is behind rap music and what is behind the lyrics, what people are feeling and what's going on. I can't make anybody a rapper. You just can't do that. I would rather have people go through the eight weeks and conic out with a better understanding of what hip hop as a whole is and a specific understanding of what rap is about, hut I'm not trying to make anybody into a star. I think hip-hop has too many rappers as it is anyway." Although he stresses the music appreciation aspect of the class, Anacron, who says he calls himself by that name because "I'm Very anachronistic," offers plenty of practical tips to his students as well. As a teaching aid for a lecture on live performance, he recently showed a clip front the movie Wild Style. It featured a duo called the 5 Footers, who were charging up a tough audience with the following traditional chant: ''Throw your hands in the air/Come on and wave 'em like you just don't care/I said hey oh/Ott oh oh." p rod c ny "Now that is a classic way to engage an audience, - Anacron says, pointing to the video. "People are still doing it today and it works. And you see that audience? Its full of thugs who are too hard to smile at their mama. and they're ruup Of Anacron plans to continue its exploration of the urban contemporary genre with break dancing and deejay workshops. It you Last a play in Hell, you are not going to get angels as actors... he Around Laramie this weekend, thoughts were more taken up with the Wyoming Cowboys nationally televised football game against Colorado State, a heated rivalry called "the border war," than with Shepard, thoughts of justice or what. if anything. the crime said about this town. "There are t 2 b ays here, like every s here," said Brenda Martin, a former student here and bartender at The Fireside who lives in Cheyenne. "You hear (anti-gay I jokes and stuff like that. But most people here are just like people anywhere else. They wouldn't actually hurt someone because they were gay." Martin. asked if violence was second nature in Wyoming, told of witnessing shooting at the Buckhorn. "Two uuys got into a fight over something, some argument about a spilled drink or something. and one of them pulled a gun and shot the other one four times," she said. "It happened right here at the bar, where we're standing." Martin then rhapsodized about what a "great har" the Buckhorn is. "We get all types," said Gregoire, before taking beers to a couple of bikers at the end of the bar. "It's interesting because you get a lot of diversity. You can meet some pretty interesting people in here." Two years ago, after the last "border war" football game here, that diversity led to a brawl that "leveled the place," he said. " It was tough to break up because you couldn't tell who was doing what to who," Gregoire said. Mark Voss, a former public defender who is now the deputy county attorney in Laramie County, where Cheyenne is located, recently wrote in the Wyoming Tribune- Eagle that the state should be leery of hurrying McKinney toward death row just because of the public's outrage over Shepard's death. "If jurors of serious mind are chosen in this case, they will ignore the hoopla and see this for what it truly is a drunken robbery gone tragically awry," he wrote. Gregoire, in the midst of turning away an order fora wine spritzer because "we're not that kind of bar," sees it differently. "I hope they hang those guys for what they did," he said. tds in the air Project seeks to prevent suicides among gay teens by Vanessa Bauza Kniln-Ridder Tribune October 27, 1999 MIAMI He cried for three hours on the phone with his mother b‘.'loft. getting out those three little \\ olds: am gay. - Joe Zolohciuk had spent his high school years heing pelted by cafeteria food and beaten up in class. He had pretended and denied. asking girls on dates to cover up the truth. He was depressed and felt isolated It wasn't until he found Project 1 FS that he finally felt he belonged. Zolohezuk survived his turbulent teens, hut many are not so fortunate. One-third of teen suicide ;ire committed 11\ aav,. bisexuals. according to a sunsv 1 , 1 3,000 students attending Massachusetts public high sk. hoot, Similar studies nationv. ide \ e confirmed that ca teens arc at-risk lot suicide. Fliou o.h I al c h;l\ committed LANK forces to plc\ cniim! teen suicides. Miami-kiwi! Plolcct YES i, one of the lev.. in the count' to spectlicall addre , ,, eas tern, . Project N'ES founder Nlartlhi had worked as an interior de,i‘2ll consultant for 25 .ears when she decided she needed to do about the conditions that \\ ere i \ inC teens to kill themselves, includin,,2 IsOlatiOn, stress from leer presstlic, lack ()I' acceptance. tea,ing and depression Shc hcrself had not cncuuntcicd discrimination as a teen prim:ink bccausc when Fugate. 52. N.+, as in hi:.jh no one ttlLcd about homosexuality and she herself \\ nlq harassed. - I didn't e\ cn disciis I thin! 1 \\ a lesbian, - she said. Fugate mu\ ed to Nliatui look ~ 2 lot more room to breathe.' And tlion:Ji she found a growing connunna>. there was still a need to help guide gas teens through their high school ve,u,. In 1995 she or.lani/cd a le \\ olunteers in her home and later mei at the headquarters of crisis helhl inr Her mission v, as simple: she knew she could not reach (2\ ern gas teen \\ In needed her. so she decided she \\ target communio, Icader , and \ counselors who ‘Aerk.. already ‘‘Oikiii: with teens. "The kids are ( Its the world that needs to chance.'' said Fugate - The real difference is going to Ilikc happen in the community. We has e to go to the places where people are getting the message jthatl they're not Animal rights group strikes again, destroys lab at Western Washington by Christine Tatum TMS Carnpu October 28, 1999 BELLINGHAM. Wash. (TMS) --- Scientists at Western Washington University are still assessing the damage recently done to an animal research laboratory. An animal rights group linked to a number of bredk ins on campuses across the country has claimed responsibility for the destruction. The group, which calls itself the Animal Liberation Front. Opposes research on animals. During the Oct. 23 break-in, members destroyed computers and months worth of research. Several offices were vandalized, and four research rabbits and 37 adult white rats none of which pose a health risk were missing. University officials said the initials "A.L.F. - and slogans about "vegan power" were spray-painted on walls, computer screens and thousands of dollars in lab equipment The group sent a letter to an Oregon newspaper claiming responsibility for the damage, said David Doughty, assistant chief of WWU's campus police. "That an individual would react in this way is neither civil nor constructive," said Karen W. Morse, president of the university. "It is not justified in any 10 I (,';tic. thcsc pl...es ~in oflitmuno ~ufl Iwo) \ ,ilc,i Clitirchcs. anal rcHiou. I e.pothl ono: the are told the lal .111ki 1110IC than 5;.; ~~ill ~'l L';llk+11~ dcni C •I , ZlllL'd :I 1110(jci I ini N tct (U IIiC all rcoplc. ins lu~iin_ in an d l I , LII , ‘ I,2IILIci outh Ilt N,:\ of Richtuti , Litholhs hunch in Cutlet "I've kit()wil ()f kids 111/() were beat 11/) 01 cibused." ihc I~kH li,tiiu ' IHtH . ,:nil Itc 1.. S dll,l ,tpriodchcd 1) cdtl Calm ,),II \\ lit, \\ Lip 11)1(,ii..(.1 t in\ hcliCk 1 \ \\,c 'Kt\ c in ,H)Himon. ;Hit 11 , onc he r;.l),it Itirhlcd k ili I )cr,itilimit N: I ,dlhlh:,. \\ hick \\ ill be cud dlc Immth. ',ILI( L1 , , , ;i1c ji,r„ kil()\\ thick.ll\ Ilia juH)lcll. 1C,111,m II II pi hCi `O. , d 1 IC illl ki(k vv Ins 11,1\ L" \ \en u) JL1,11, ,, A th,o the \ v~rn an ,ti Ail\ I ,t/c.d. v Ii !1 Iv \lll, , hClki ll' i 111 it Il t' 'II11 „ k':L Ili.'l ti , flit ,cll, .1111.1 ITC siodoits Iron] tiomo Hoc, l li,r. to lath to 1, 1 , t i1i% ,intl lICL,III,C 1 (It)ri'i Il,)\\ ti , TL kI. lic ,;t1(1. ißut \\ !hit liar t ittnctl In ins in high itlticttn't htippi:n ui lli.i IV I 11 a . All lltlal iese.uch is an integral part kd tlli jC`,Callit proise. and v, e at We-tern comply completek all oversight regulations." The A.L.E. destroyed animal laboratories at the University of 'Mimics( ita in April. causing damage estimated at $2O million. "The damage had to he e\rensive because Money is the only thing those people understand. - Katie Fedor, a spokes oman lOr the group who said "It is not justUied ill any I.vay. Animal research is an integral part of the research process, and we at VVestern comply completely with all oversight regulations'.'' -Karen W. Morse, President or Western Washington liniv,n.sity she did not participate in the UM raid, told TMS Campus in April. "What happened decreased the profits PAGE 8 EMEDEME ! \l/4111'.(
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers