Sunday, February 28, 2010

Scenery - Campus Project

Scenery - the general appearance of a place; the aggregate of features that give character to a landscape. Dictionary.com. This definition gave me the meaning of a campus. Scenery of the campus does give out a influence to each person’s emotions. When the person sees a black barrier around a campus, they may feel unsafe and creepy. When the person sees huge palm trees rooted on each corner of the campus, they may feel wonderful and dreamful.

From my previous experience with Gallaudet University, the campus was built inside a huge black iron fence. That is the first scary impression brought to me when I came to visit the campus for the first time. The second sorrowful impression was the dead bushes around the security building. The rest of impressions was pretty negative because the thousands dead leaves on the grounds, small spaces of flowers, and few trees.

With my group’s ideal campus, I want to improve the scenery in this campus than Gallaudet University’s campus because I don’t think that campus is fitting for other go green people. First thing I would improve with my ideal campus is the front entrance because the front entrance is where the people pull in and see the campus for the first time. I don’t want them to talk about the first thing they saw is the dead bushes. I would hide the security building with colorful flowers and bushes and in some ways it makes the security more inviting and make the visitors more safe.

About the safety reasons I prefer the campus to add a fence but I would add some kind of vines with colorful flowers around the fence so it makes more eco-friendly to the neighborhood.

I want to add colorful flowers to empty spaces around the campus, like the corners between buildings or the spaces between the entrance doors and windows around the buildings. I want to insert trees where there is vacant green spaces to give shades for the visitors and residents. I want to add a variety of trees to the campus because a variety gives out different appearance and feelings from each tree. Each different tree have different shade of green and shape of leaves.

With all kind of green addition to the campus would make the people who came to feel inviting and very airy. When you sit next to steel you may feel unsteady with it because you know that it is man made object. When you sit next to a green plant, you may feel relaxing because you know it is a part of nature. So that’s why you know that you cannot live without the green because it is a part of your life.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

BLOG #2


Actually I was not on the East Coast when the first hit of historical winter storm. I flew home on Thursday evening because an organization, Deaf Inc. invited me to come to their event on Saturday and to present myself as Miss Deaf Missouri. I was supposed to fly back to D.C. on Sunday but my flight was cancelled. So I called AirTran and they moved me to Monday evening. Again, it was cancelled and moved to Tuesday evening.

Good thing that my flight was delayed to Tuesday because I met Alan Hurwitz. He was trapped in Oklahoma too so he flew to St. Louis, Missouri because he rather to stay at his friend’s home instead a motel in Oklahoma. So on Tuesday, I went to Deaf Inc. and met him. It was so weird because I am a Gallaudet student and met the president of Gallaudet in St. Louis, Missouri instead at Gallaudet campus! Lucky him, he make it back to D.C. on Tuesday evening because he flew to DCA, not me. I was going to fly to BWI.

I was trapped in St. Louis until Wednesday because Baltimore got a lot more snow than D.C. When I saw the news that snowstorm is GONE in D.C. but a snowstorm was coming to St. Louis on Thursday morning so I decided to fly to Atlanta, GA and stay at a friends home for one night on Wednesday. On Thursday I flew back to the East Coast!

When I got back to the campus, I saw many gloomy faces of Gallaudet students and my face was shining from warm weather in St. Louis and Atlanta! When my friends told me how devasting that they were trapped in the dorms with no shuttle services and unpaved sidewalks. Only I can say, THANK GOD I WAS IN ST. LOUIS WITH MY FAMILY AND PETS!

I don’t see any positive feelings from my friends but a lot of negative feelings. I understand how they feel when DPS told them the campus is closed and the shuttle service is closed. I think that is kind of unfair for the students because they don’t have other things to do on the campus. Maybe Gallaudet should set up a recreation center for

students during weekends, bad weather, etc. A week of seeing the same people on campus drove them crazy and made them wanting to get out so badly. But the week before the storm, the weather was so beautiful and the students were staying in the dorms? That don’t make any sense to me but I think the peers and media influence are the reasons because when they see other people whining about trapping in the dorms and the news on televisions telling them to keep warm, get more food in case, etc make them worry. So they feel the need to get out and feel that the outside world is fine because of staying in ONE place with a fence around them make they feel “paranoid.”
(Pictures by Jessica Willoughby)