UNCG image to the buildings

By Zhongming Xu

I Arrived at UNCG for two weeks. All on campus is fresh to me. I don't know what to talk about? Let me talk about buildings of UNCG.

According to my observation, buildings of UNCG have three characteristics: the color of the buildings; the height, and building materials.

About color, I have observed that only two types of colors are being used on the buildings, brown and white. Strictly speaking, only one kind of color throughout the campus, though the white building, Jackson library, is an exception. Why the Jackson Library tower building uses different color?

I have asked many people with whom I met so far, but no one could tell me why. Perhaps I have not met the person who might answer my question. In order to find the answer, I will continue to ask. I hope I will know the answer before I leave UNCG. For the question of color, I guess that, since UNCG built, the University made a clear rule. All the buildings must use one color. This reflects University tradition. It is a kind of cultural heritage. This view is supported from IPC Director, MR. Elliot As to the question why Jackson library tower is a white building, I can only think that library is the culture and learning center of the University. It must reflect the central position of the Library.

About building height: Actually, as the color of buildings, also is the same. All buildings on campus are no more than five floors in height. Jackson library is the tallest building in the campus, with nine floors. I understand the fact in the height of library tower is taller than other university buildings marking it a prominent on campus. It is more important in the position of University.

About building materials, through the observation of University project under construction, using steel structure materials are being used for internal support; wood or synthetic materials for walls, and the same color for outer-walls. So I may say, these buildings are environmental construction; all the materials can be recycled; even when building will be dismantled at some point, the building materials won't have much construction waste. In China, we currently still use concrete as main material, but environmental protection buildings already have built in e University campus of American. So the gap of between the two countries is obvious. Thus, I also think the world expo 2010 Shanghai, all exhibitions are green building. These are our ideal and goal of urban construction in future. We need to think and do a lot.

"The Vagina Monologues" at UNCG

Last weekend I had the privilege of participating, for the second consecutive year, in the UNCG Womens and Gender Studies Department sponsored performance of The Vagina Monologues.

This play, by Eve Ensler, is based on a series of interviews with women about - you guessed it - vaginas. The play is designed to confront the audience with various difficult issues surrounding women's bodies and sexuality. By turns hilarious, shocking, tragic, and titillating, the play has become part of an annual "V-Day" event for many colleges and communities, serving as the focus for fund-raising and consciousness-raising to fight sexual violence against women. To help keep these performances both fresh and relevant, Ensler writes a new "spotlight" segment each year to highlight current issues. Last year, for instance, she focused on the plight of New Orleans after Katrina.

This year's edition, directed by Kaleigh Malloy with the assistance of Noelle Avina, was performed last Friday at 7:30 and Saturday at 2:00 and 7:30 by a talented and beautiful cast of UNCG students, staff, and faculty. Kaleigh chose to include two spotlight monologues: "Hey Miss Pat," a different one about New Orleans, and "Baptism," which confronts child rape in the Congo war. The shows went well -- except for the fire alarm going off in the middle of the Saturday afternoon run. Very disruptive. One of the most emotional pieces was interrupted, and the girl doing it was so stressed by being jerked out of character to leave the building, mill around aimlessly for ten minutes, and then resume where she had left off, that she dissolved into tears on completing her scene.

Attendance was quite respectable at all three shows, even the Saturday afternoon run that I had been a bit worried about. The audience was enthusiastic - the Saturday night crowd was definitely more responsive, laughing longer and more often at the funny bits. And we got a very nice write-up in the student paper The Carolinian.

I did the monologue about birth, "I was there in the room," as a dialogue with Noelle. It actually worked quite well as a dialogue. We imagined ourselves as mother and sister of the woman giving birth; we were in the hospital waiting room discussing the incredible event we had just witnessed. When our director saw me knitting at rehearsals she decided my character should knit. This was rather cool; however I was not very productive while in character because I was concentrating on my lines. For some reason actors in this play do not have to memorize their lines but read them from the script instead. I did memorize - for my own comfort level - but followed along in the script as backup.

Turning a monologue into a dialogue was one of Kaleigh's several directorial innovations. She also added a free-form movement piece as an introduction and used music to highlight transitions between monologues. Finally, instead of following the traditional red, pink, and black color scheme, performers were asked to choose costumes based on purple, brown, and dark blue and green. That's about as far away as you can get from red, pink, and black! I found it refreshing once I got over the shock.

Yes, the Vagina Monologues have come and gone. (Here I have to confess that all last week, I really wanted to go around saying "the vaginas are coming, the vaginas are coming." But that would have been unprofessional.)