What’s up with Honors and all the talk about this thing called “the commons”?
Find out here and at the Thursday, 11/8 talk with Jay Walljasper at 8pm in LSB 001 to find out more.
Category: Students
Honors senior requests survey participants!
Dana Senderoff, an Honors senior enrolled in Prof. Thompson’s HNR 360 Presidental Election and the New Media, has a request for you! She writes, “The presidential election is coming very soon, and the winner of this election will determine the future of health care in America. It is very important that we all understand the changes in health care that will come about from the two candidates, but it seems as though not everyone is properly informed. The media is our main source of information, but it does not always provide trustworthy information. I am conducting a term project on the portrayal of the Affordable Care Act through new and social media. In addition to my research, I have created a survey to help gather information from SU students. Please take my survey, it will only take two minutes!”
Thanks for participating! You can access the survey at the link below:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/K3W2GJ6
A Message from The Director
These past few days have been trying, even frightening as Hurricane Sandy has battered the east coast. As I write, my sister, a physician in Manhattan, is living without power and heat in her Greenwich Village apartment. She’s still a young person and can manage. But this morning I’m thinking about all those who require help, the elderly and children, and people with disabilities.
This puts me in mind of what I think it means to be involved with honors at SU. Our collective goal is to become larger than our singular interests. That’s what our approach to civic engagement is all about.
As the university returns to business as usual let’s hold together the life of the mind and our lives as citizens. And let’s keep our friends and neighbors in our thoughts.
Stephen Kuusisto
Director
“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too can become great.” –Mark Twain
But What ARE the Commons?
So Honors keeps sending messages about this thing called the commons because there will be a talk Thursday, November 8th at 8pm in LSB 001, but what ARE the commons?
One answer comes from history and the enclosure movement which was a land grab by the moneyed class that denied predominantly rural citizens the rights to public lands–or, the commons:
A significant precursor to the Industrial Revolution was the end of the so-called “open field system” during the Enclosure Movement in England during the 18th Century. Many families lost their traditional holdings and ultimately drifted into the growing industrial cities in search of work.
Further answers are available at a very popular location within the rubric which we call the commons–Wikipedia. Here you will find the wisdom and editing labors of a collective of commoners among them author, George Orwell (of 1984 and Animal Farm fame):
Stop to consider how the so-called owners of the land got hold of it. They simply seized it by force, afterwards hiring lawyers to provide them with title-deeds. In the case of the enclosure of the common lands, which was going on from about 1600 to 1850, the land-grabbers did not even have the excuse of being foreign conquerors; they were quite frankly taking the heritage of their own countrymen, upon no sort of pretext except that they had the power to do so.
HNR 240 Food Stories presents….”Rot or Not?”
A group of students in Jolynn Parker’s HNR 240 Food Stories class has created this display on the ground floor of Bird Library to educate the SU community about chemicals in processed food. The food should rot, right? Wouldn’t it be disturbing if it didn’t rot? Follow the progress of the three burgers (McDonald’s, campus dining, and locally sourced, respectively) at their tumblr feed below.
Get out of the Orange Bubble!
Impact Week is an entire week of community service planned by the SU Student Association. Students and organizations are planning community service events to do throughout the week that remind us that while we are Syracuse University students, we are also members of the Syracuse community. Student Association will be tabling throughout the next few weeks allowing students to sign up to go to community service events.
- Monday 5th: Salvation Army 3:00-6:00 10 students
- Wednesday 7th: Ronald McDonald House 4:00-7:00 7 students
- Rescue Mission 10:30-12:30 4 students, 4:00-6:00 4 students
- Friday 9th: The Samaritan Center 12:30-3:30 10 students
- Saturday 10th: Dome Day, before Louisville game 15 students, Thornden Park Cleanup 9:00am-11:00am
- Tuesday 13th: American Red Cross Blood Drive 11-4pm