FYSH Optional Writing Prompt #1: University Crossing

Savannah Szymanski

Professor Conway

Freshman Honors Seminar

27 October 2014

University Crossing

One of the most recent renovations within the University of Massachusetts in Lowell campus is the University Crossing building on East Campus. The building is placed near the center of the University’s campus where it is easily accessible to students by walking from other campuses or by taking the bus. Though the University Crossing building has been a part of the campus for several years, the building can be considered completely new due to the extremely modern renovations and improvements on the edifice which we completed for the fall semester of 2014. The building not only holds various floors for offices and presentation rooms, but also the Riverhawk store, the book store, and the Crossroads Café. The Building renovations cost the school a sufficient amount of money, however the student activity and attendance of the stores and café within the building provide a large profit for the school.

In 2011, the University of Massachusetts in Lowell purchased the University Crossing building and transformed the structure from a former hospital to the University’s site for their offices, stores, and campus restaurant. The property was originally used as a hospital during the industrial era in the early twentieth century, but continued to be used as a hospital throughout the early 1900s (“University Crossing: History”). The ownership of the property was altered various different times where it was originally known as the Saint Joseph’s hospital until it finally became a full service community hospital named Saints Medical Center (“University Crossing: History”). Once the Medical Center vacated the property to occupy a new hospital in a separate location, the University purchased the location as the new headquarters for student relations, offices, and school stores.  

The newly renovated University Crossing building serves the purpose of accommodating students’ needs while simultaneously generating a large profit for the school. By holding the book store, Riverhawk store, and the Crossroads Café, the University Crossing building contains some of the most attended store on campus. Students generally spend a large quantity of their money at the start of the year on textbooks that can be ordered and purchased through the book store. Often times, people find it more convenient to order through the bookstore because that way students can order all their books for every class through one place rather than going to multiple stores and websites to order their materials. In addition, being able to purchase books from the school store website online and pick them up later in person is an added convenience for students.

            Above the book store is the University’s large Riverhawk store, equipped with all the latest University of Massachusetts in Lowell attire. When one walks around campus during average day hours, it is almost impossible not to see various students sporting the school logo and all the Riverhawk colors of white, red, and blue. Students all over campus wear their university attire as a means of comfort and school spirit to classes, school events, sports games, and anywhere they feel like showing off their Riverhawk pride. Whether it is casual clothing, coffee mugs, or the classic photo ID lanyards, a large majority of students purchase Riverhawk gear from the overly large collection of school oriented goods within the Riverhawk store. The amount of students that purchase custom Riverhawk items from the school boosts the profits made from the University crossing building.

            Next to the convenient and profitable Riverhawk store and book store, is the Crossroads Café which is attached to a downsized Starbucks. The Crossroads Café is not only attractive in appearance with a unique yet likable furniture and color scheme, but also appealing in their offered cuisine. The café offers a refreshing selection of pizzas, sandwiches, and other classic café meals that are not available at the University’s several dining halls. The Crossroads Café accepts Riverhawk points, which acquaints to money placed on students’ IDs, as well as meal swipes within select time intervals throughout the week. The café attracts a vast amount of business due to its convenient location which allows students to go out to eat or order take out without the high prices of restaurant food because the café is run by the school and made accessible to students and their budgets.

                                                                    Works Cited

“University Crossing: History” University Crossing. University of Massachusetts in Lowell. 25 October 2014. Web.

Riverhawk's Hockey Game

Savannah Szymanski

Professor Conway

Freshman Honors Seminar

20 October 2014

Riverhawk’s Hockey Game

            Some of the most well-known and participated events on campus are arguably the University of Massachusetts in Lowell hockey games, which are always attended by masses of people eager to cheer on their respective team. As crowds of students fill the Tsongas center, the environment becomes filled with energy and excitement. It is not only the large amount of people in the audience that make for an enjoyable experience, but also the performance of the players as they fight to maintain their established reputation as a higher level hockey team. The players can feed off of the infectious energy of the crowd meanwhile the audience becomes infatuated with the game causing them to become increasingly thrilled as the team plays. The fantastically symbiotic relationship between the players and the audience contributes to a hockey rink surrounded by hyper energized individuals ready to celebrate their team’s victory or compensate their loss through obscene cheering and commemoration. The University of Massachusetts in Lowell hockey games are some of the most anticipated events throughout campus allowing the students of the university to band together as one chaotic yet unmatchable student body audience.

            Upon attending my first game at the Tsongas center, I quickly realized that this year’s season would be occupied with hype filled crowds of students and families prepared to cheer on our University’s valiant team. An hour before the game began, the entrance to the Tsongas center was packed with both young and old hockey fans awaiting the opening game of the Lowell Riverhawk’s hockey season. Children were wearing player’s duplicated jerseys while students sported the free hockey shirts supplied by the school in a fulfilled attempt to maximize school spirit. Crowds of students swarmed the center fully ready to support our team as they challenge their longtime rivals the Boston College Eagles. For a large portion of new students, this was their first exposure to a Riverhawk’s hockey game. For other more experienced students, this game was one of many sports oriented activities where they are provided the opportunity to display their support for their school. Whichever level of exposure one has to the Riverhawk’s hockey games, the opening game this year has surely contributed to a correlation between students and their new strong loyalty to the team. As the audience members all took their seats throughout the Tsongas center for the opening game to start, contagious energy and rampant noise flowed through the air and a truly memorable moment occurred that no person could have fully predicted no matter their experience with Riverhawk games.

            In one extraordinary moment in the opening scenes of the Riverhawk game, an unforgettable moment occurred that caught public attention, and it all started with the student section of the Tsongas Center. Every sports game is traditionally begun with the singing of the national anthem out of respect for our country’s customs. In addition to this tradition, many times the anthem will be sung by a live performer, which is exactly what occurred the night of the opening game. A female vocalist was introduced to the audience as an award winning singing prepared to endure the nerve-wracking experience of preforming the national anthem in front of thousands of people, including a massive crowd of lovely yet obnoxious University students. Through a string of unfortunate events, after her introduction to the audience and at the start of the anthem, her microphone was tragically malfunctioning and unable to play the audio throughout the rink. To make matters exponentially more awkward, the jumbo-tron screen was filming her the entire time, so her realization of this embarrassing mishap was viewed by every individual in the audience. However, in an unpredicted turn of events, the student section of the stadium took the luckless situation and transformed it into an uncanny and remarkable one to be reveled about for days to come. It began from one student, then to a group of students, to the entire student section, followed by the entire stadium singing the national anthem in unison. The spectacle transferred the uncomfortable malfunction while singing the anthem to a marvelous revelation of students bonding together to fulfill the tradition of our school and country.  

Personal ticket from University of Massachusetts in Lowell vs. Boston College Opening game

Year 2014

Savannah Szymanski

Professor Conway

Freshman Honors Seminar

6 October 2014

Year 2014

            While sitting in the theatre awaiting the performance of Year Zero, I fully expected to spend the next three hours of my night paying minimal attention to a history based performance that focused more on a history lesson than actual story telling. Although the topic of Cambodian immigration and individuals seeking refuge in America from Cambodian genocide is an extremely serious and riveting topic, history based placed generally seem to bore me rather than entertain. I personally seem to enjoy reading about history rather than watching a documentary of it, therefore I had low expectations for what I might gain from the play’s storyline and performance. However, as the play began, I was kindly surprised. The performance started with a peculiar and gripping scene where the protagonist speaks to a human skull, begging for its guidance over his mother’s now deceased soul. The main character, an adolescent teenage boy in his beginning years of high school, is displayed as a frequently bullied Cambodian immigrant aiming to find a balance between an unstable social life and the even more tormenting psychological destruction that comes with losing a parental figure.

            My attention was immediately caught the moment the protagonist, Vuthy, began speaking. To begin with, the character Vuthy speaks like a comedian, expression in his voice accompanied by a sarcastic and dramatic undertone. His character is shown to not only be a victim of the stereotypes inflicted upon him due to his immigrant status, but also of his inability to fully adapt to his culture’s traditions seeing that he is both Cambodian and American. In addition, Vuthy has relationship conflicts with each other character with in the play, including his sister Ra, Ra’s boyfriend Glenn, and his neighbor Han. With each character having their own separate past, the play took a more individualized approach to the immigrant experience where it displayed the effects of first hand immigrants and the effects on the following generations. Year Zero included an intriguing plot that proportionally combined modern personal conflicts and historical background all with a Cambodian American motif.

            Arguably the most surprising portion of the play is something I discovered after the performance. The play is based around the generation and following generations of Cambodian refugees that fled their native country in order to escape the racial cleansing and genocide being inflicted by Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot. The most shocking realization that resulted from this performance is the massive amount of people who were unaware of the Cambodian genocide prior to the play. It was in some sense baffling that a large portion of students who attended the play had not been made aware of the happenings in Cambodia with the Khmer Rouge before they had prepared to view Year Zero. Two of the most commonly talked about genocides amongst modern day society are the Holocaust led by Adolf Hitler and the Soviet Union Genocide led my Joseph Stalin, followed by other well discussed conflicts such as massive genocides in Syria and Darfur. Each of these extreme killings of populations have resulted in large quantities of awareness amongst all communities. In contrast to these frequently discussed tragedies, the Cambodian genocide and ethnic cleansing is rarely among the most talked about mass killings, despite the fact that the overall death toll as a result of the Cambodian genocide was roughly one and a half million deaths. The idea that political uprising, dictatorship, and colossal murder of generations of Cambodians is rarely learned about in most history classes is almost saddening when examining how detrimental the events in Cambodia were to not only the country as a whole, but general population of individuals that can trace their ancestry back to the fateful events that took place there. From personal experience, the Cambodian genocide was and remains obsolete to my previous curriculum in public schooling while growing up, and most students can say the same. The sheer irrelevance of genocide to most classrooms is troubling especially when events such as the Holocaust are so widely discussed, meanwhile the amount of deaths in the Cambodian ethnic cleansing is approximately six and a half million deaths less  than that of the holocaust and is therefore seen as irrelevant to classes that teach about major world genocides. Although these alternative genocides are viewed as more world matters due to other country’s’ involvement to end said genocides, the overall events in Cambodia should be much more recognized throughout history classrooms nationwide, rather than just in areas with a high population of Cambodian American students.

Merrimack Reparatory Theatre (ten minutes before opening scene October 1rst 2014)

 

Year Zero Pamphlet (Includes cast, sponsors, and historical background information)