The Contemporary Issues main goal is spreading awareness of what’s going on in the world today. They address subjects through discussions and presentations by some of the area’s top experts on topics that range from terrorism to global warming.The groups goal isn’t to sit quietly in a classroom taking notes while listening to a lecture then, that couldn’t be further from the truth.
The events are highly interactive and thrive on the question and answer segments. Also, the topics are geared towards a college level audience and focus on how these issues are affecting West Chester University. On top of that, the event shows a motion picture that ties into one of these topics.
Recently the group held its terrorism discussion, which they followed with a screening of 2005’s hit film “V for Vendetta” which stars Natalie Portman and Hugo Weaving and centers on a masked man’s crusade to right wrongs from his past and bring down a tyrannical government straight out of Orwell’s 1984. The masked man, known as “V”, uses methods to bring about his desired change that most would call terroristic in nature.
The discussion that proceeded the film revolved around whether or not terrorism is ever justified and how it was portrayed in the film. The panel consisted of Linda Stevenson and Chris Stangl of WCU’s Political Science Department and Matthew Pierlott of WCU’s Philosophy department. These three professors led the discussion and used their individual areas of expertise to best answer student’s question.
The Q&A segment started off with the night’s most controversial question: Is the government depicted in the film a thinly veiled shot at America’s present leadership? The movie pulls no punches in its criticism of America but the panel explained that it merely depicts one possible outcome if America keeps heading down the path it’s currently on. The key point the speakers bought up was that we should ask ourselves how many steps away from that government are we?
The graphic novel that the film is based on is more of a criticism of England’s Margaret Thatcher than America, as the panel, with some help from the audience pointed out. The discussion moved from a number of topics from Hitler and the rise of totalitarianism in Europe to the labeling of people as “different”.
“Beware of those people who tell you to beware of people,” Pierlott said as he summed up the night’s discussion.
Keeping in step with the University’s recent environmentally friendly campaign the Contemporary Issues group sponsored a discussion of global warming and its effect on West Chester and what we can do to help solve the problem.
The discussion centered mostly on applying Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” to West Chester and its surrounding areas. Unfortunately, the movie was not shown afterwards, as scheduled, but the discussion took center stage.
The panel featured four experts in the field of global warming and was moderated by Joy Bergey who is a member of several local environmental groups including PennFuture. The panel featured Richard Whiteford, who was trained by Al Gore as a presenter of the An Inconvenient Truth presentation. Also on the panel were Dianne Herrin and Kristy Deischer-Eddy of Mom’s for the Future and Dennis Maq Crook, a specialist in energy audits.
The discussion was mainly driven by audience questions and featured very little in terms of presentations from the individual panelists, something that Bergey regulated with a stop watch to prevent any monologues from breaking out. She did a great job of managing what, at times, became a very heated debate as audience members scrambled to get their points across.
Issues of “green schools” and lowering CO2 emissions were among the most popular of the night. Crook introduced the audience to his concept of energy audits, which consist of having a professional analyze individual houses to determine how much potentially energy wasting.
State Representative Barbara McIlvaine Smith issued a statement through one of her interns to assure those in attendance that she was working tirelessly to help curb “climate change”.
Audience members asked questions pertaining to hybrid cars and, of course, the long awaited electric car. The panel stressed the need to improve public transportation as well as make environmentally friendly cars more accessible to the average citizen.
Contemporary Issues has a long list of discussions scheduled to take place in the near future, including one based on the film Across the Universe.
Colin McGlinchey is a third-year student majoring in English with a minor in journalism. He can be reached at CM646588@wcupa.edu.