my colby-sawyer capstone
“My group's Capstone was certainly a culmination of our learning experiences. We were able to apply what we'd learned from our classes, internships, and practical experience hours and tackle a problem on our own.” - John Bosse, Exercise and Sport Sciences major
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NEW LONDON, N.H., Jan. 26, 2006 - Colby- Sawyer College will continue its Human Rights and Social Justice Film Series this winter and spring. This semester's films highlight American soldiers deployed in the doomed Iraq city of Falluja; stories of four Chinese teenage girls working in the largest Mardi Gras bead factory in the world; and a teenage girl who joins a campaign for comprehensive sex education in her hometown high school.
The Human Rights Film Series is sponsored by the Colby-Sawyer College Cultural Events Committee and the Colby-Sawyer Coalition for Peace and Justice. The events are free and open to the public and will be held in Wheeler Hall at the Ware Campus Center.
The film series starts with “Occupation: Dreamland” on Wednesday, Feb. 8, at 7 p.m. Filmmakers Garrett Scott and Ian Olds were given access to all operations of the Army's 82nd Airborne, where they lived with the unit 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The filmmakers were able to give voices to the faceless soldiers, and, as a result, this documentary provides a revealing look into the Army life, through cramped living quarters and a shaky lens that accompanies the squad on nerve-racking patrols. Scott and Olds draw a portrait of regular guys doing their best to carry out orders in untenable situations.
The second film of the series, “Mardi Grass: Made in China,” will be shown on Wednesday, March 8, at 7 p.m. The film is a look into the conditions of a factory in the Chinese city of Fuzhou, where young workers, mostly women, are paid $1.20 a day to work 14- to 20-hour shifts making the beads that are later showered on tourists in New Orleans. The film captures the stories of four teenage women workers, providing insights into their economic realities, self sacrifice, the dreams of a better life, and the severe discipline that goes along with working in a factory compound.
The final film for the spring series, “The Education of Shelby Knox,” will be shown Wednesday, April 5, at 7 p.m. This coming-of-age film is a story about a teenager who joins a campaign for comprehensive sex education in the high schools of her town, Lubbock, Texas. Although her county's highs schools teach abstinence as the only safe sex, Lubbock has some of the highest rates of teen pregnancy and sexual transmitted diseases in the nation. Shelby, a devoted Christian who has pledged abstinence until marriage, is swept into becoming an advocate for comprehensive sex education, changing her political and spiritual views on the way. She wrestles with big decisions: stand by and let others hurt, or go against her parents, pastor and friends to do what she knows is right.
- By Marthe Fidler '06
Marthe Fidler is an intern in the Colby-Sawyer College Communications Office.
Colby-Sawyer, founded in 1837, is a comprehensive liberal arts college located in the scenic Lake Sunapee Region of central New Hampshire. Students from 25 states and five foreign countries learn in small classes through a select array of programs that integrate the liberal arts and sciences with pre-professional experience.
