Marvel fans’ excitement for new Avengers movie evident at early showing

Marvel fans’ anticipation for the new Avengers clear from Thursday’s premiere.

Ever since 2012 when Avengers first came on the scene, Marvel fans have been anticipating the continuation of their favorite superhero series.

May 1 marked the premiere weekend of Avengers: Age of Ultron. (seb) organized a bus trip on Thursday, April 30 at 9 p.m. to the R/C Hollywood Cinema in Arbutus. Tickets for the evening premiere quickly sold out.

When the 2012 premiere hit, (seb) planned a movie night on the quad, but this year, a bus trip to a local theater seemed to be the better option.

Finals week, and other academic responsibilities, didn’t stop fans from attending the event. In many cases, plans were made in advance. Katie Seong, a senior biology major said, “I have an exam that night, so I’ll have to hurry in order to catch the bus.”

Attendees varied from hardcore Marvel comic fans, wearing Avengers paraphernalia and costumes, to students who just wanted a night out with friends.

The movie’s cast is one of the main reasons for its popularity among students. The chemistry between the actors is one of the reasons why the first movie was such a hit.

“I’m most excited to see Scarlet Witch, who originated in my personal favorite series, X-Men,” said Angel Bridges, a junior biology major. This will be Elizabeth Olsen’s debut in the Avenger’s film as Scarlet Witch.

Alongside the original six Avengers, there will be War Machine, Nick Fury and Scarlet Witch’s twin brother Quicksilver. Then, of course, there is the new villain, Ultron, a robot attempting to exterminate humans.

Bridges also said that, “I’m afraid the hype around superhero movies is dying down.” This could be due to the overexposure of super heroes like Iron Man, Captain America, the Hulk and Thor, who each have their own individual movies. But, with box office rates earning up to $207 million for the 2012 Avengers premiere, according to the IMDb website, there is a good chance this year’s premiere will not be a letdown.

The theater was packed and most of the attendees stayed through the credits to get a glimpse of what is to come for future films. From the dramatic cliffhanger and a packed auditorium, it is clear that superhero movies aren’t going anywhere, and neither are their fans.

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Former student, Baltimore resident collects donated toiletries in wake of riots

On Monday, April 27, riots broke out in Western Baltimore between police officers and citizens. A CVS was torched and destroyed, leaving citizens in the surrounding area without access to toiletries and cosmetics. One Baltimore City citizen leapt to her feet after the chaos to bring a helping hand.

On Tuesday, April 28, UMBC alumna Janea Kelly started an IndieGogo campaign titled “Help Clean Up West Baltimore” with a goal of $500 to buy supplies for Baltimore residents. As of Monday, May 4, the campaign has raised $2,902.

“I’d spent the night really frustrated,” Kelly admitted. “Something [about Baltimore] was different and I felt like there was something I can do. The next morning I felt like I was struck with lightning. It was a eureka moment.”

The 25-year-old city resident commandeered the classroom in the back of Red Emma’s for local donations.

For the next week, she is accepting donations of nonperishable goods, toiletries and cosmetics for those affected by the torched CVS. She’s been advertising this campaign through Twitter under her username @pterosaur and her Facebook account, both totaling an audience of over 3,000 people.

Through Twitter, she’s connected with numerous local politicians, including Maryland State Delegate Shelly Hettleman, who went to assist Kelly in organizing the goods.

When asked how she’d reached people in such high places, Kelly credited her Twitter.

“Someone I met on Twitter talked to me saying they wanted to support [the campaign],” she said, “and I didn’t realize she was a delegate until the next day. It was really cool to see how social media can spread to a space where city and even national-level delegates can reach you.”

The campaign really took off on Tuesday as activists and citizens alike came together and organized a community clean-up. Because public schools were closed, the campaign also collected healthy food for the Baltimore City children who normally depend on cafeteria lunches during the day.

Many of these efforts have been managed and hosted by Red Emma’s Bookstore 33Coffeehouse. “Red Emma’s is one-of-a-kind and I don’t think many cities have places like that: a safe space space for people to work, learn and grow,” Kelly said.

At the moment, Kelly hasn’t decided what she will do with the money raised on IndieGogo. While the original $500 was originally supposed to go to buying bulk supplies for Mondawmin residents, she reconsidered this, stating that “it doesn’t feel appropriate to make a decision now.”

“So far, I’ve dropped off goods to rec centers,” she said. “This is a very hungry city; it needs a lot of help and we just need to use this time as an example and learn from it.”

Photo credit: Josh Sisk

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Women of color unite to express their unique talents in a night of performance

Several women demonstrate their artistic talents in a showcase for the “Telling our Stories” project. The project is intended to define and subsequently deconstruct stereotypes about women of color.

On April 29, the Women’s Center and the Women of Color Coalition partnered together to create a project entitled “Women of Color: Telling Our Stories” in the Commons Sports Zone. Megan Tagle Adams, the coordinator for the Women’s Center, and Bria Hamlet, a senior health administration and public policy double major as well as the current president of the Women of Color Coalition, organized the showcase.

The project’s aim was to raise awareness and reject stereotypes about women of color. Through promoted visibility and community-building, women were encouraged to stand in solidarity against racist and sexist comments. This challenges misrepresentations and creates a platform dedicated to their own self-representation.

Bria McCormick, a senior majoring in psychology, was one of the performers from that night. “Representative” was her first poetic piece detailing how she would masquerade her feelings in an effort to hide her reality. “Are You A Man” was her second piece about her feelings toward immature boys she knew in high school. In regards to performing, she said, “unfamiliar stages always feel like home by the end of the poem(s).”

Ashlei Gray (aka Smokei Gray) is a senior majoring in linguistics. She was inspired by the “Telling Our Stories” flyers. These flyers pictured various women of color defining stereotypes and stating that they did not identify with them.

“My set was about letting go of limiting expectations, be it from society, our loved ones, or even ourselves,” said Gray. She was not used to playing her guitar, but she was more confident and inspired to do so after hearing everyone else perform. She felt the energy from the engaging audience as she conveyed her message through lyrics.

An 18-year-old songstress named Makeda Rose belted out an original song called “Bad Gyal” and a Beyoncé medley of “Listen” and “If I Were A Boy,” with the accompaniment of her keyboard. She is currently a senior at George Washington Carver Center of Arts and Technology. Since the age of three, she honed her talent by embracing all music genres, particularly rhythm and blues and opera.

People of similar ethnicities criticized her eclecticness, but she continued to walk in her own truth. “My greatest inspirations are my ambitious mother and the talented Whitney Houston,” said Rose, “so I plan to attend Azusa Pacific University in California next year to major in contemporary vocal music and songwriting.”

Fourteen other women were showcased that night, revealing talents in photography, interpretive dance, poetry, monologues, music and visual arts. The women who performed that night were given a chance to expose their joys and sorrows, to reflect on them and to conquer how society defines them.

Photo Credit: Kristina Soetje

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Commuter Carnival brings UMBC commuters and residents together

The Commuter Carnival provided food, fun and plenty of tunes to UMBC students on Wednesday, April 29. Students weigh in on their experience at the carnival.

It was sunny, about 75 degrees and a beautiful day to be out at the Commuter Carnival on Wednesday, April 29.

Organized by Off-Campus Student Services, the Commuter Carnival is a miniature version of Quadmania. There may not be many rides, inflatable prizes or big musical concerts, but it is still important to represent the commuters of UMBC. Plenty of effort goes into planning it, and it provides a fun option for the largest portion of the UMBC student population.

Andrea Calderon, a sophomore psychology major, said, “I like how they do stuff like this. It makes commuters feel like they’re a part of the school.”

The festivities involved a mechanical bull, cornhole, caricatures, popcorn, snow cones and a photobooth. The mechanical bull drew plenty of attention, with droves of UMBC students wanting to test their skills on the metal beast.

Unfortunately, the majority of students weren’t that lucky with their turns on the bull. Many of them fell off pretty quickly and in a ridiculous manner. “This guy is just laughing at everyone that tries this. He must love his job,” said Calderon of the man operating the mechanical bull.

Several organizations had a table at the event. Student life, Residential Life, Study Abroad, summer and winter sessions and the Albin O. Kuhn Library and Gallery were among the on-campus organizations present at the event. Xfinity and E-Z Pass were some of the off-campus organizations to make an appearance.

Many of the tabled organizations gave out prizes or snacks. The library’s table challenged students to take their best “shelfie.” A shelfie is a selfie taken with a shelf of books in the background. An actual shelf of books proved too difficult to pull off in the quad, so the library provided a poster board with a picture of shelved books to serve as the background.

WMBC, UMBCs freeform radio, was in attendance and DJed the event. Raymond Johnson, a sophomore global studies major, was the DJ for the event. He played upbeat music that very much fit the vibe of the day. In fact, Johnson mixed some tunes in real time at the event. “I’m just mixing off the cuff. I’m playing whatever I want,” said Johnson.

The music choices were popular with the attendees of the carnival. Kiara Alexander, a sophomore media and communications and global studies double major, said, “I really like all the tunes WMBC is playing. They’re really smooth and just fit the day.”

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The work of two researchers at UMBC was cited in the most recent issue of UN Chronicle, the magazine of the United Nations. A paper by John Rennie Short, professor, School of Public Policy, and Luis Mauricio Pinet-Peralta, associate director of the health administration and policy program, “No Accident: Traffic and Pedestrians in the Modern City,” Mobilities, vol. 5, pp. 41-59 was cited in the April 2015 issue of the Chronicle in a discussion of how cities are important for achieving sustainable development goals.

Their paper examined the causes behind the increase in traffic accidents in cities in the global South and discussed solutions. To read the full article “Cities will play an important role in achieving the SDGs, click here.

by Kimberly Moffitt

Join the Baltimore Traces project team for an event focusing on two Baltimore communities and their shared legacies of industrial development: Brooklyn-Curtis Bay and Sparrows Point. The event will feature Mapping Baybrook, a media-based documentation of projects in Brooklyn-Curtis Bay and a film screening of Mill Stories: Remembering Sparrows Point Steel Mill. Members of the Sparrows Point and Brooklyn-Curtis Bay communities will also discuss the challenges they face and possible futures. (Note: this event is rescheduled from April 28.) 

Tuesday, June 2, 2015
6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Chesapeake Arts Center
194 Hammonds Lane Brooklyn Park, MD

This is a free event. Parking is available.

For more information visit baltimoretraces.org

This is event is funded in part through the UMBC BreakingGround initiative
and the Hrabowski Innovation Fund.

Published in the Sunday edition of the New York Times on May 3, Mathematics Professor Manil Suri wrote his third column since being named contributing opinion writer on the application of math to predict Maryland’s blue crab population. He examined the complexities and various factors that can go into a mathematical formula to predict the population.

“Fecundity and survival rates — so innocuous as algebraic symbols — can be difficult to estimate. For instance, it was long believed that a blue crab’s maximum life expectancy was eight years. This estimate was used, indirectly, to calculate crab mortality from fishing. Derided by watermen, the life expectancy turned out to be much too high; this had resulted in too many crab deaths being attributed to harvesting, thereby supporting charges of overfishing,” Suri wrote.

In his column, Suri further discusses the difficulty in finding an accurate quantitative formula to calculate the blue crab population, which depends on a number of factors that are not easy to predict.

“In some sense, that might be the wrong goal anyway. Randomness is built into biological processes, so predicting a population is never going to be like calculating the interest on a bank account. The best we can do is use available science to make educated guesses about various outcomes,” he wrote.

To read the full column titled “Mathematicians and Blue Crabs,” click here.

Nancy Kusmaul, an assistant professor of social work, was recently selected to participate in the 2015 Hartford Change AGEnts Policy Institute. She is one of 18 scholars to be selected from a nationwide pool of highly qualified candidates. The institute takes place from June 7-9 in Washington, D.C.

As part of the program, Kusmaul will be analyzing policy issues in a collaborative environment and will work to develop strategies to leverage stakeholder support through coalitions and grassroots efforts. Topics at the institute range from federal policy and regulatory change to state and local policy work.

During the institute experience, participants will go to Capitol Hill and to other federal regulatory offices to meet with representatives. Kusmaul will be discussing improvements to nursing home regulations to make nursing home care more person-centered. She hopes to meet with Maryland Representative Elijah Cummings and Senator Barbara Mikluski while on the Hill.

“I am passionate about improving nursing home care for older adults in this country. This institute allows me to shape the policies that impact the day to day lives of the people I have worked with as a nursing home social worker and continue to work with as a social work researcher,” Kusmaul shares.

The Policy Institute is one of many opportunities offered by the interprofessional Hartford Change AGEnts Initiative. The Initiative leverages the John. A. Hartford Foundation’s powerful community—helping its scholars and grantees learn from and support one another while they adopt, evaluate, and sustain changes in practice and service delivery that improve the health of older Americans and their families.

The Hartford Change AGEnts Grant is operated out of The Gerontological Society of America. The Society is a national organization of professionals in the field of aging and is dedicated to the promotion of scientific study. It is designed to encourage exchanges among researchers and practitioners and to foster the use of gerontological research in forming public policy.

Further information about the Hartford Change AGEnts Initiative and the Policy Institute is available here.