A contractor will be working on ADA ramps in the area of the Halethorpe MARC Station during the week of May15 - May19. The work will consist of removing and replacing several ramps.

“I thought, oh my God, women can be gay? I didn’t know that until college.”

Kate Drabinski of the gender and women’s studies department offered a lighthearted and funny keynote address for the Lavender Graduation Ceremony, which took place at 6:30 on Tuesday, May 2. Originally from Boise, Idaho, Drabinski went to college in New York City, and discovered through the women’s center at her school that women can, indeed, be gay. Drabinski also offered some reassurance, saying that they can be queer after college:

“’Will I have to be straight?’ I genuinely worried about this,” she said. “But I’m still a total lesbian. Still queer. You can survive this and it will be wonderful.”

The Lavender Graduation ceremony honors lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer students and their allies at over 100 college and universities throughout the country. Dr. Ronni Sanlo designed the first Lavender Graduation ceremony in 1995 at the University of Michigan after she was prevented from attending her biological children’s graduation due to her sexual orientation.

This is UMBC’s fourth annual Lavender Graduation. Despite a last-minute relocation, Commons Mainstreet was fully decorated with bundles of purple balloons, candles, lanterns and flower petals.

According to the Human Rights Campaign website, “The color lavender is a combination of the pink triangle that gay men were forced to wear in concentration camps and the black triangle designating lesbians as political prisoners in Nazi Germany. The LGBTQ civil rights movement took these symbols of hatred and combined them to make symbols and a color of pride and community.”

During the program, a dozen awards were presented to students, faculty, staff and alumni. The awards recognized student leaders as well as offices, departments and individual faculty and staff members that are allies to the LGBTQ community.

Anyone could submit nominations for these awards through a Google form. A committee of students, faculty and staff voted on the awards, though individuals could not vote on an award for which they were nominated.

Departments from across disciplines were nominated for awards, including psychology, gender and women’s studies, American studies, social work and health administration and public policy. Many of the students, faculty and staff in attendance are involved with the Women’s Center, Mosaic Center, or student organizations that advocate for LGBTQ individuals.

Callie VanAntwerp, a sophomore English and gender and women’s studies major, is the Vice-President for external affairs, education and activism in the LGBTQ Student Union, a new organization. She became involved in QUMBC, which no longer exists, when she started at UMBC.

Previously, QUMBC used to focus on external affairs, education and activism and the Freedom Alliance worked with internal affairs. Instead of two different organizations, they are now two branches of the same organization. While they started meeting as a group at the start of this semester, the merge only became official about three weeks ago.

“It’s easier now because we have a better support system within the organization; we don’t have to compete for resources or deal with events that may conflict,” said VanAntwerp.

The event was hosted and organized by Carlos Turcios, program assistant for Diversity and Inclusion. He donned lavender pants and a matching tie for the occasion.

Turcios has been at UMBC since he began his undergraduate career in Fall 2008 studying sociology and psychology. This semester, he will complete his master’s degree in advanced sociology while working full time under the supervision of Lisa Gray, Assistant Director of Student Life for Cultural and Spiritual Diversity. While there are several interns, Turcios and Gray are the only two full-time staff members in the Mosaic Center.

Turcios said he plans to continue his efforts even after he completes his degree: “Our goal for next year’s [Lavender Graduation] is to keep making it bigger and bigger,” he said.

The post Lavender celebration honors LGBTQ graduates and their allies appeared first on The Retriever.

How can you tell if your student organization is making a difference on campus? Sometimes, people come out and tell you.

“I’ve even gotten personal messages on Facebook. … people telling me, I’m so glad NAMI is on campus,” said sophomore biology major Bhuvana Kotana. “People are learning things from NAMI. They send me things like thank you for having these events and talking about mental health conditions.”

From April 24-28, the UMBC chapter of National Alliance on Mental Illness held an event each day. This is the second year in a row that they have had an entire week dedicated to mental health awareness. Executive board members pulled all the stops, including everything from film screenings to pies-to-the-face to dogs.

For many, the most-anticipated event was the “You Are Not Alone Festival,” which took place on Thursday starting at 4 p.m. Students gathered in the Gameroom to eat snacks, play pool, make stress balls, and collect information about mental illnesses. Students stayed for an hour (or three). The decorations, music and snacks lasted all throughout the night. A quiet section in the back of the room housed artwork including paintings, photography and decorated t-shirts representing mental illnesses in various ways. Professor Jason Schiffman of the Psychology department spoke briefly about stress-relieving techniques and his personal experiences.

While the chapter at UMBC is relatively young, NAMI is a national organization that was founded in 1979. According to their website, they “[are] the nation’s largest grassroots mental health organization dedicated to building better lives for the millions of Americans affected by mental illness.”

Their outreach isn’t just limited to big events. During regular biweekly meetings, NAMI members prepare and present on mental health first aid, self-care, how to help a loved one, and other topics.

Tim Farrell, a sophomore media/communication studies major, assisted in the marketing of these events as the club’s Outreach Committee Chair.

“… I went through some of my own mental health struggles with anxiety, so that kind of gave me that extra motivation to really care about it … ,” said Farrell. “It’s an important issue that I want to talk about with other people, because it’s not being talked about.”

My Story, an event typically held in mid-March, is the most moving for people according to Farrell. During this event, those who have been affected by mental illnesses speak about their experiences.

At the end of the week, nearly 50 people gathered for the Out of Darkness 5K walk for suicide awareness and prevention. While NAMI was not directly involved in the planning, they encouraged all to attend the event on Saturday morning. Peer health educators such as senior biology and psychology major Sahar Elloumi took a leading role in planning this event.

The walk, sponsored by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, also represented a collaboration between University Health Service, the Counseling Center and UMBC Recreation & Physical Education.

AFSP has had a positive relationship with UMBC for several years. In fact, AFSP secured a grant for the Counseling Center which allowed for the creation of the online Interactive Screening Program, which evaluates mental health status and identifies risk factors. After taking anonymous and voluntary screening, students may be contacted by a university counselor for an optional follow-up. Students have the option to communicate with a counselor virtually or in person and are not required to go speak to someone or take any further action.

“We’re trying to get mental health awareness across campus,” said Elloumi. “Even if it’s just donations or just walking, we want people to know that they’re not alone; there are resources on campus.”

The post NAMI hosts mental health awareness week appeared first on The Retriever.

Colossians 3:15-17 (MSG) - “Let the peace of Christ keep you in tune with each other, in step with each other. None of this going off and doing your own thing. And cultivate thankfulness. Let the Word of Christ-the Message-have the run of the house. Give it plenty of room in your lives. Instruct and direct one another using good common sense. And sing, sing your hearts out to God! Let every detail in your lives-words, actions, whatever-be done in the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the way.”

One important distinction between public worship and private worship is the place of our initiative. Corporate worship reminds us that our faith is fundamentally reception, not our own initiation. In private devotions, we lead ourselves in some sense. In corporate worship, we’re made to receive the leading of others. In private worship, we’re in the driver’s seat. We decide what passage to read, when to pray, what to pray, how long to linger in Bible reading and meditation, what songs to listen to or sing, what gospel truths to preach to ourselves, and what applications to consider. But in corporate worship, we respond. Others preach and pray and select the songs and choose how long to linger in each element. We’re positioned to receive. It is a wonderful thing in our personal devotions to make such choices, but it is also good for us to practice engaging with God when someone other than ourselves is making the calls. Corporate worship demands that we discipline ourselves to respond, and not only pursue God on our own terms. It is an opportunity to embrace being led, and not always taking the lead (David Mathis, “Five Benefits of Corporate Worship”).

The language in the passage along with the article directs our attention to see the cooperation of all who are coming together to both lead and follow, being in tune and in step with one another. Most importantly, we want to be in step with the Holy Spirit’s leading, responding to all that God has purposed in our times of worship together.

As we worship today with the song “Hands to the Heavens” let the verse “have your way, have your way” be our prayer for how God would move in our times of corporate worship.

https://safeshare.tv/x/UZlqigKYYjI

-AK

The Chesapeake Bay Trust, a non-profit organization dedicated to restoring the Chesapeake Bay, has recently funded a high-resolution mapping project that will inform restoration efforts in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. Matt Baker, professor of geography and environmental systems and expert on ecological restoration, will contribute to the project by developing and studying cutting-edge stream mapping methods in partnership with the Chesapeake Conservancy.

Baker’s project will focus on mapping tiny headwater channels (the points where streams begin) that can be hard to detect with traditional mapping techniques. “Headwater streams turn out to be really important, because that’s where human activities have a much more direct impact on downstream conditions,” says Baker. He explains, “Headwaters are intimately involved in transporting whatever we put onto the landscape down toward larger systems and the Bay. They’re the places where the land-water connection happens.”

Baker’s project will use Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) to map select locations in a wide range of landscapes across the watershed, from mountains to coastal plains, agricultural fields to urban sewer outfalls. LiDAR directs laser pulses from aircraft down at Earth’s surface, and how quickly and the angle at which the pulses return to the aircraft are used to detect the land surface’s height and whether it’s covered by plants or water.

Although LiDAR generates detailed maps, “current computer algorithms can be fooled” by some terrain results, so a human interpreter is still needed to ensure accuracy, Baker explains. In an effort to improve how computers can do this work automatically, the project will test the performance of a variety of new algorithms in different physical settings.

A later phase of this work will attempt to map every stream in the six-state, 64,000-square mile Chesapeake Bay Watershed based on recommendations that Baker and the Chesapeake Conservancy make about which mapping methods will work best, and where.

Mapping streams, and especially previously unmapped headwaters, has major implications for protection of the watershed. “Currently, there’s some controversy over what constitute the ‘waters of the United States,’ which are protected by the Clean Water Act,” Baker says. Smaller headwaters may not be included if they haven’t been mapped. Although Baker is not in a position to decide which waterways make the legal cut, “We can provide information that can inform those decisions,” he says.

Also, mapping headwaters has a role to play in preventing pollution from reaching the Bay. “The stream network is really the circulatory system of the Bay watershed,” Baker says, “and getting a better picture of that is critical for understanding water movement, erosion, and how pollutants and wastes are transported, as well as what features are important for keeping the water clean.”

Overall, his project with the Chesapeake Conservancy is “a great example of a partnership among agencies, academia, and non-profits,” Baker says. “I’m a researcher, the Conservancy is a non-profit conservation organization, and we are working with state and federal agencies to give them a product they can use to better manage the restoration efforts in the Bay watershed.”

Image: Matt Baker, professor of geography and environmental systems. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.