Campus Life’s Mosaic, Interfaith Center & Queer Student Lounge welcomed Justin Clapp, also known by her drag persona Vivica C. Coxx, who performed and spoke about her life as a drag diva. Coxx is a UMBC alumna who graduated in 2007. As a student, she was an RA at Patapsco Hall and the Walker Avenue Apartments.

The PAWTalk was held in the Commons Skylight Room on Tuesday, April 3 and was open to the public. Coxx also brought fellow drag queens Naomi and Stormy Day. The drag divas danced to a variety of songs and discussed their drag queen history afterward.

Coxx spoke about the beginning of her career. “I was given the opportunity to compete in an amateur drag competition,” she said. “The first show I did was in the House of Coxx amateur show. I was in my late twenties.”

The drag diva presented pictures of herself. “I also do characters, such as Ursula. I also made a Rose Quartz costume from Steven Universe — [that costume] was really expensive,” she said.

Coxx founded the House of Coxx and described the history of the community she built. “As long as you’re interested in drag and care about entertaining people, the House of Coxx will welcome you,” she said.

Coxx calls Stormy Day and Naomi her daughters. She said, “we are unique as a drag house and family. Not only are we the most diverse, but we have people of varying gender identity, varying race and sexual orientation.”

The House of Coxx was also built as a platform for social justice. Coxx said, “we fought for prisoner’s rights and we drew attention to queer Latino and Black history. We’re partnered with QORDS, where LGBT teenagers meet other LGBT teenagers.”

The drag diva emphasized the importance of consent in any relationship. “We start every show on the topic of consent,” she said. “We usually ask the audience if they know what enthusiastic consent is. If your response is an excited ‘yes,’ that is what enthusiastic consent is.”

Stormy Day mentioned that others often misunderstand drag queens. She said, “being a drag queen, I get offensive, transphobic questions from family members outside the circle. Some people don’t understand that we are living in a whole different world.”

Naomi experienced similar reactions from her family: “My family is very religious. They know that I do drag, but they completely ignore it and refuse to acknowledge it.”

Mechanical engineering alumnus Dante Wheeler has no connection with the LGBT community. He said, “I came to the event because it looked interesting. I learned a lot about drag and saw how they seemed like a tight community. Before, I never knew how a lot of different people did drag.”

Body politics play a large role in the trans-drag community. “You aren’t seen as human. You aren’t seen as normal. People will come up and touch you,” Coxx said. “[The House of Coxx] created a space based on consent so everyone is comfortable. We will not hesitate to kick anyone out of our show who disrespects anyone’s body in any way.”

“We usually adopt anyone to the House of Coxx if they fit what we do,” Coxx said. “We ask, ‘do you want to promote social justice, put on a good show and become a part of the family?’ Because those are the real questions.”

A glass of red wine a day keeps the doctor away. A saying that stems from the old English proverb; an apple a day keeps the doctor away, and commonplace justification for the daily consumption of alcohol, but how much truth does the statement really hold?

The National Institute of Health moved to explore the validity of this statement after planning a study to determine the effects of drinking a glass of alcohol on the subject’s health. Recently, the potential findings of the experiment have been called into question after the funds to maintain the study were revealed to come from alcohol distributors.

On March 31, the Baltimore Sun published an article entitled, “Johns Hopkins to continue with international alcohol study despite criticism about funding,” where it explained public concern with Hopkins’ decision to continue with this study.

The Johns Hopkins ProHealth Clinical Research Center is one of 16 cross-continental institutions participating in the experiment. Because UMBC does not currently have an alcohol research study, they were not asked to participate in the experiment.

The ten year government trial was designed to follow 7,000 participants over six years. Half of them were required to consume one alcoholic drink per night and the other half to remain abstinent unless special occasion arose. This study, unlike previous ones, allowed participants to consume any alcoholic beverage of their choice. In turn, the NIH agreed to pay for every drink of each participant over the six year time period. The goal was to track heart attacks, strokes, heart-related chest pain and death in order to determine any causation between alcohol consumption and health symptoms. The targeted group was specifically adults 50 years and older who presented with high cholesterol, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, a heart attack, stroke or stent for a clogged artery in the past.

However, the experiment grew quite costly as the corporation was required to pay for every beverage of the 3,500 individuals enlisted to consume an alcoholic drink for the study. Originally, a corporation within the NIH, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism provided direct funding for the experiment.

The NIAAA is “the lead Federal agency for research on alcohol and health and the largest funder of alcohol research in the world,” according to their mission statement found under the NIH website.

In 2014, it was relieved that the Foundation, a non-profit group under the NIH, had reached out to alcohol companies for support in funding the experiment. Currently, the Foundation is receiving money from Anheuser-Busch InBev, Diageo, Pernod Ricard, Heineken and Carlsberg. These corporations have donated upwards of $67 million thus far and the Foundation is asking for another $23 million.

The debate is whether or not the findings of this study will be biased by the nature of their funding.

Carlo DiClemente, a psychology professor at UMBC with research experience in alcoholic studies offered insight into the matter by providing his interpretation of the controversy at hand.

“The concern is that maybe there is too much influence of the beverage companies and will Hopkins and the other sites around the world be able to be objective.” DiClemente said, adding, “If an agency like the NIAAA would have paid for it, it would have used up all of its budget.”

DiClemente explained the scope of the Foundation, stating that the reach of the alcohol corporations does not extend further than their ability to provide funds to the Foundation. The Foundation then takes the money and applies it to the study. The corporations do not have access to the design of the experiment or to results not made available to the public. In other words, the corporations should not be able to influence the results, however skepticism falls in whether or not they will.

DiClemente concluded by stating, “You have to balance the value of the work and the independence of the work.”

The situation presents a difficult decision for participating universities such as Hopkins, forcing them to evaluate the capabilities of the study after discovery of its funding.

For more information regarding the issue, visit the Baltimore Sun and Wired.

Currently on UMBC’s campus, only five dining facilities serve breakfast on weekdays: Au Bon Pain, Chic-fil-a, Starbucks, Outtakes and True Grit’s. Coming soon, Einstein Bros. Bagels will open in the library, but is that going to disturb students trying to study?

Starbucks is known for having a line in the morning from the cashiers to the doors, and the other locations get quite busy as well. Should Einstein become this popular, would it be a distraction?

Beau Dickens, a tutor in the Math Lab, located in the library, thinks it might be. “Students come in at all times of the day to learn,” they said. “If one student regularly comes in in the mornings, Einstein’s could throw off their schedule and ruin their studying.”

The ground floor of the library is the most visited for the printing availability and the tutoring center. It also holds the art gallery and the front desk to check out or return books. Should Einstein become a popular place for breakfast, students could be interrupted as they utilize the library’s resources.

Elijah Johnson, a first-year psychology and social work double major, said he thinks Einstein has the potential to be more popular than its predecessor, Pura Vida.

“First of all, none of these places besides Chi-fil-a and D-hall really have a meal that comes for a meal plan swipe,” Johnson said. “If Einstein’s offers something like that, I’m sure a lot more students with meal plans will go there so they can get food and a drink,” he continued.

Despite that, Johnson does not see this as a distraction. He explained, “there are tutors there every day of the week, and Einstein’s can’t be busy every minute of the day. People should still be able to study, even if they have to change tutors.”

Johnson and Dickens agreed on the idea that students who are studying could relocate to a different floor of the library to escape any distractions. Since the library offers a variety of quiet and silent floors, it should not be hard to escape any breakfast chaos. The main issue is the tutoring center.

Dickens said that most of their students are regulars. “They all have schedules that work for them. If their schedule happens to overlap a busy time at Einstein’s, it’s not really fair to ask them to change. They should be comfortable with their tutors.”

There is a possibility Einstein will not be as busy as expected. However, the chain’s popularity throughout the state points towards a busy breakfast line.

If it is as busy as it is expected to be, a possible solution would be to move the tutoring center. Placing it on another floor where students can talk would allow for both sides to be accommodated should it come to that extreme.

The Department of Literacy, Culture, and Language Education in the School of Education at Indiana Bloomington invites proposals for panels, individual papers, round table discussions, interactive workshops and poster sessions to be presented at the First International Conference on Literacy, Culture, and Language Education (ICLCLE) on October 5-7, 2018 at Indiana University - Bloomington.  

This international conference includes research, pedagogy and practice about diverse issues in language, literacy and culture in education.  The participants will be involved in a local and global dialogue and exchange of ideas, research and experiences on the themes of the event.

Download the Call for Proposals.

Date and Location: 

April 18, 2018 at 12 p.m.

LLC Conference Room, 422 Sherman Hall

Title: Spitfire: Framing White Rage in Response to Black Rhetoric

On March 26, 2014, for the first time in intercollegiate competitive debate history, two

African American women won top honors and were named champions of the Cross Examination Debate Associations national tournament. Using this particular incident, this dissertation explores the press reports published about this historic moment. Through a collection of 18 artifacts, this dissertation offers an emblematic example of how American culture emboldens the white gaze to impose a culture of oppression, intellectual repression of Black thought while victimizing and silencing Black women. This rhetorical analysis considers the 2014 Cross Examination Debate Associations final tournament outcome to explore press reports as an exemplary case of how American cultural standardization edifies the white gaze and its rage in reaction to Black youth and Black rhetoric.

Pulling from Whiteness Studies, this dissertation presents a history of intercollegiate

competitive debate alongside a history of the development of American culture to frame

unmarked whiteness as problematic. Citing this historic moment, this incident demonstrates how whiteness operates culturally and rhetorically to maintain a system of intellectual repression of Black youth. This project uses exnomination, abstract liberalism, American Africanism, and cooptation to frame the rhetoric of whiteness as rage and demonstrates how this rage acts as a violent terror tactic that passively and aggressively coopted the Debater's strategic use of the "nword" to create symbolic dissension that elevates the Black male debaters while simultaneously silencing the Black women debaters. It is the goal of this project to demonstrate how whiteness

operates, to resist its violent terror tactics.

Dissertation Committee: Craig Saper, Chair

Beverly Bickel

Kimberly Moffitt

Lester Spence

Christel Temple

The public is welcome to observe.