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)

Boott Cott Mills Tour

Savannah Szymanski

Professor Conway

Freshman Honors Seminar

22 September 2014

The Lowell Mills were once a vital part of the city’s economy and financial stability, therefore the rich history offered by the Boott Cott Mills museum in Lowell provide deep insight into Lowell’s work force and community. Amidst the informational tour of the former mill factory, the factors that went into everyday life in the mills were revealed with a depth previously unknown to me. Although one would expect life in an industrial factory to be extremely difficult and at times, life threatening, the degrees of these hardship are not always common knowledge. The factory mills were generally composed of a majority of young women, who traveled to the mills from low paying farm lives often referred to as “mill girls”. However, small children also worked in the mills with lower scale jobs. The higher level positions in the mills were exclusively filled by men whose work was viewed as proficient and beneficial to factory production; the owner, overseers, and other boss occupations were all explicitly male positions as well.

The mills generally produced textile goods, where the most dangerous textile jobs were filled by the mill girls and at times, children. Most jobs throughout the factory were accompanied by conditions such as possible limb loss, severe illness and often times death. Most of these poor conditions were in response to the lack of employee safety implemented by the owner, unsafe machinery, and detrimental fabrics being inhaled. Smaller children often times either severely injured their ligaments by climbing on machinery that they could not reach, or losing limbs due to the lack of care in machine production. When observing the stories and poor conditions that are discussed throughout the tour, it is easy to not only disapprove of the mill life, but also pity those who had no other choice, but to work in the mills.

Often times, Mill girls acquired their jobs in response to needing to live their life away from their family’s farm and or obtain a substantial amount of money to send back to their families. Girls often saw the Mill life as their only ticket out of a financially unstable life on the farm, where they could not only have a job and receive money, but also have housing and a certain degree of personal safety outside of the factory. There was a particular give and take between the benefits and consequences of the industrial mill life, where girls sacrificed their safety in the work place while in change gaining independence as a well as external safety in their personal lives.

In terms of empathy and relating the situations that mill girls would undergo to my own personal life, frankly I am distraught. The mill life seems dramatically more positive than life on a farm, however the consequences of limb loss, disease, and potential death are far greater than farm life. The most strenuous job I have ever had is an eight month cashier job at a local grocery store. Complaining about my weekly paychecks of minimum wage and fifteen hours of work a week seems extremely insignificant compared to the extremely disadvantageous circumstances faced by mill girls. Living in a first world country, coming from a middle class family, and obtaining a low scale job as a teenage is barely comparable to the life of a young girl in a mill factory. Touring the museum and discussing the average lives of those who worked in the mills has brought to light the extreme differences between a mill girl and myself as well as the industrial revolution and the society of the twenty first century .

Another topic that arose throughout the tour was the idea of current day sweat shops in third world countries. The idea behind the conversation was, if the conditions of present day sweat shops are equivalent or worse than the mill factory conditions, what should be done? Most people agreed that these factories should be shut down immediately and the corporation in charge should end productions through all underprivileged countries. Despite the morality in this option, I have to disagree given the state of the populations working for these factories. Most times these factory workers are extremely poor and can either work in the sweat shop factories with poor conditions or resort to the streets of their respective countries. This is a very clear reason why these sweat shops should not be shut down, or else all the workers would be worse off in their lives. Instead, the conditions should be improved dramatically as well as the salaries of the workers. Although this may decrease the profit for these businesses, the lives and welfare of these underprivileged workers will be increased and preserved while they simultaneously remain employed.

The Tsongas Center: Prompt 1

Savannah Szymanski

Professor Conway 

Freshman Honors Seminar

15 September, 2014

One of the most iconic buildings within the University of Massachusetts Lowell Campus is the Tsongas center building. As a structure dedicated to entertainment and providing the best experience for its audience, the Tsongas center host sports events, musical performances, and an array of public events for the community of Lowell and the student of Umass Lowell to enjoy the facility and all that it as to offer. The center is most commonly known as the University’s rink site for their wildly popular hockey games. With the increasing reputation and skill level of the University’s team, Umass Lowell Riverhawks, the activity and status of the Tsongas center is continuously on the rise; however, the history of how the Tsongas center came to be is often unknown amongst the campus community.

The Tsongas center was opened in January of 1998 in Lowell, Massachusetts in memory of the well respected former senator Paul E. Tsongas who had passed away from pneumonia the previous year. Paul Tsongas was born and raised in Lowell during the several of the most financially detrimental years in Lowell economic history. The poor financial state of the city was partially due to the closing of textile mills in Lowell that aided the town in economic stability ("Paul Tsongas." Newsmakers). Being part of the wealth deprived environment, Tsongas learned early on in his life of the struggles members of lower economic classes face every day.  Tsongas was shaped by the environment he was involuntarily brought up in, therefore effecting his later campaign in politics that was geared toward improving the overall economy of the nation: “Lowell became a city haunted by unemployment and empty storefronts, and for Tsongas served as a personal emblem for the economic strife of the entire country” ("Paul Tsongas."Newsmakers). After volunteering for the Peace Corps and devoting his life to giving back to his community, Tsongas began an influential political career that was unfortunately struck down early on after being diagnosed with several illnesses and later dying at the age of fifty six. Though Tsongas’s story and career were cut short due to health circumstances, the impression he left remained and later inspired the dedication of the Tsongas center to him.

The Tsongas center contains a well-developed history, inspired by a Lowell native, and lives up to those standards by containing some of the most entertaining aspects of a sports facility. The centers hosts events specifically designated for the University students as well as popular events open for public attendance, though typically the most enjoyable aspect of Tsongas center events are those that offer discounted prices to campus students. With thousands of seats, a jumbo-tron with video access to the audience, and several food options on the upper level of the arena, the stadium provides the maximum amount of entertainment available for audiences: “In addition to exciting hockey action, the center hosts concerts, family shows, sporting events, tradeshows and conferences. Some of the world's biggest stars have performed before capacity crowds. We can seat 6,500 patrons for hockey and up to 7,000 for concerts without losing the intimate feeling” (“Venue History” Tsongas Center”). The University’s students as well as the Lowell community are able to enjoy a positive and all around pleasurable viewing experience at the Tsongas Center, while the facility still receives a large profit through ticket and food sales to reinvest in maintaining all of its unique features.

            The facility commonly hosts public concerts with well-known artists, speeches, and family friendly events. In addition, they also put on exclusive student focused events including student free skate days, freshman convocation, and other student activities. Amongst the most popular of these occasions would be the sports events, starring the extremely supported hockey games during the highly anticipated Riverhawk season. With a Division one team recently returning from yet another division championship, the popularity and fan base of the Tsongas center as they host these games has increased dramatically over the years. The integrity and inspiration offered from the life of Paul Tsongas as well as the success of University of Massachusetts Lowell sports teams and other events held throughout the year have contributed to a well-rounded stadium that has the potential to greatly increase in profit and audience members in the future.      

 

                                                                        Work Cited

         "Paul Tsongas." Newsmakers. Detroit: Gale, 1997. U.S. History in Context. Web. 15 Sept. 2014.
       
         "Venue History" Tsongas Center. AYC Media. Web. 15 Sept. 20114.