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(08/26/21 1:03pm)
Coming soon to a vacated hair salon near you: an all-new, unique movie theater with Mercer ties.
Jay Black, a Mercer professor, Carl Fambro, owner of Francar's Buffalo Wings, and Bill Ackerman, a recent Veterans Affairs retiree, have begun converting the former Indigo Salon & Spa next door to Francar’s and Georgia Public Broadcasting into “Black Bear Theater” for Mercer students and the local community.
The Macon-Bibb Planning & Zoning Commission just approved the new business, and a local designer has already begun the renovation phase of the facility. The idea is to show second-run movies, partner with local schools and provide a more social atmosphere for movie-goers.
“We think with the limited run concept, we can actually bring what we call ‘art films’ to Macon,” Black said.
The Black Bear Theater will provide the classic movie staples: soda, candy and popcorn. In addition to the basics, it will also provide a selection of beer and wine for patrons to enjoy before, during and after the production.
“This is an experimental theater, there is nothing like this as far as I know,” Black said. “We’re having a dine-in theater, but with no kitchen. We will allow food in -- where other theaters don’t -- but you just owe me five dollars to bring it in for what we call the uncorking fee. You can bring your mother’s lasagna in.”
Outside, the large patio that Black Bear will share with GPB and Francar’s will be a beer garden, a large outdoor eating area with plenty of tables for moviegoers to eat and drink while waiting for their film to start. When the time comes to enter, they pick up their remaining food and head inside to enjoy the film.
“We’re going to be putting chairs and tables outside,” Black said. “We’ll open the concession stand early, and we’ll be serving beer and wine. We’ll have a beer garden going from here at the theater all the way over to Francar’s. You can get beer and wine from us and wings from Francar’s.”
The hope of the new theater is that there will be “no bad seats,” as Black put it.
Instead of a traditional stadium seating arrangement, there will be a variety of seats available to moviegoers, some as close as five feet to the screen. The movie will not be projected from a traditional booth, but rather from a ceiling-mounted projector.
“I’ve always wanted to run or own a theater,” Black said. “I put myself through undergrad and master’s degree by being a projectionist or theater manager, so I have the manager background, but I never started my own theater.”
The theater is planning to be ready to open before January.
(08/24/21 12:00pm)
The Macon Violence Prevention Program has sent a call-to-action for local Macon nonprofits and community efforts: send us an idea to reduce violent crime, and we will fund it.
“Macon-Bibb county is experiencing an unacceptable spike in crimes like murder, aggravated assault, especcialy during these past two years,” Macon-Bibb County Mayor Lester Miller said.
Miller gave a speech in June asking for the community to help. According to Miller, the sheriff cannot protect Macon-Bibb “by himself.”
“One person can’t do it, one mayor can’t do it, one commission can’t do it. Our team can,” Miller said. “You can’t sit back behind a monitor and a keyboard every time Macon-Bibb County has an incident and complain about what they should have done.”
Miller changed tack shortly after, presenting an invitation for collaboration to the community and a call for aid. The hope was to kick-start community engagement in stopping the rising violence in Macon-Bibb County.
During his speech, the sheriff’s department was responding to a fatal shooting less than three miles away.
“Of course it’s disheartening to hear that, especially during a time when we’re there to do something that takes action about it,” Miller said regarding the death in an interview with WGXA News. “It’s another life that’s gone. But we’ll get over it.”
Macon-Bibb County has held multiple forums all over the community, holding up to the mayor’s promise, and has been holding in-person forums as well as producing an online 13 question survey for people to pitch ideas. According to The Macon Telegraph, a typical suggestion is to involve youth early, but they never seem to show up at the forums.
“I do think we still need to be able to touch the youth,” a forum attendee said. “I hadn’t seen many youth at these forums, and when we’re talking a lot of things, a lot of ideas that come up are based in the youth, and so we need to get the youth to the table, and so that’s one of those things that I just hadn’t seen in these forums yet.”
The final forum will be held Aug. 19 at the Methodist Home for Children for city District 4.
Macon-Bibb County Commissioner Mallory Jones III will be hosting the forum. According to Macon Violence Prevention’s Facebook page, the event is expected to run for an hour and a half.
(08/20/21 6:01pm)
Many hail registering to vote as one of the most important steps in an adult’s life, and it is one of the few things that being 18-years-old still opens to the young American.
Registering to vote allows Americans to take a step towards becoming a civically responsible citizen. Many over the years have fought for this right to be available to all. One such person was the freedom rider and Congressman John Lewis.
“The vote is precious,” Lewis wrote on Twitter in 2016. “It is the most powerful non-violent tool we have in a democratic society, and we must use it.”
The quickest way to register to vote is online. For those who live in Georgia, you can start on the website of the Secretary of State’s My Voter Page. Click on the small button that says “Register,” and it will walk you through the process.
To vote in Georgia, it is necessary to be a Georgia resident and a citizen of the United States. Additionally, you will need legal documents to prove this. Any of the following documents are acceptable as proof:
Any valid state or federal government-issued photo ID
A Georgia driver’s license (which may be expired)
Valid employee photo ID from any employment with the U.S. government, Georgia, or any county, city or other state authority or entity.
Valid U.S. passport
Valid U.S. military ID
Valid tribal photo ID
In order to be an eligible voter for an election, it is necessary to register to vote at least 30 days prior to that election.
The first upcoming major election will be a state special election of legislation Nov. 2.
(08/19/21 4:11pm)
Brian Kemp, the governor of Georgia, is taking some action to protect the state against COVID-19, but he is still refusing to shut down the state.
Kemp says his stance against closing the state is due to the fact he does not want to stop Georgians from being able to provide for their families. However, he is encouraging people across the state to get vaccinated against coronavirus.
“This safe, effective vaccine reduces the likelihood you could get infected with COVID-19, but more importantly, it will drastically reduce the chances of you ending up in a hospital bed or losing your life,” Kemp said.
Not everyone is backing the governor’s decision. In response to a recent executive order released by Kemp, in which he banned local governments from enacting mask mandates, Savannah Mayor Van R. Johnson wrote a tweet condemning his decision.
“It is officially official. Governor Kemp does not give a damn about us,” Johnson wrote. “Every man and woman for himself/herself. Ignore the science and survive the best you can. In #Savannah, we will continue to keep the faith and follow the science. Masks will continue to be available!”
Kemp has also announced he will raise the number of state-supported medical staff in hospitals from 1,300 to 2,800, which represents almost $125 million dollar staffing investment on top of the already committed $500 million dollars that will be put toward both rural and metropolitan areas of the state.
“Today I want to reiterate Georgia will remain open for business, we will not shut down, we will not stop families from earning a paycheck,” Kemp said.
Kemp has planned to give all state employees Sept. 3 off and strongly encourages them to get vaccinated before they return to work. Commissioner of Georgia Department of Public Health Dr. Kathleen Toomey has also made promises of more available testing in wake of the lines at Atlanta testing centers beginning to lengthen.
(04/21/21 8:37pm)
Mercer University will be hosting its own set of TED Talks this spring in order to showcase student research and education in all colleges and fields through the TEDx program.
Shruti Jha, executive director of TEDx Mercer, is a senior majoring in public health. Jha spearheaded the efforts that made the organization a reality. She said she wanted to give Mercer students an opportunity to participate in an event they grew up watching and learning from.
“I feel like all of us have been watching TED Talks since forever now. I can’t even remember the first time I watched it. We’re supposed to take away these meaningful messages from these TED Talks, and I always looked up to them,” Jha said.
Jha’s first step was finding out how to engage with TED Talks on a deeper level than just watching them.
“I knew that there was a way for universities to also have their own platform, to have their own TEDx, to show off their own talent that they have at the university. I thought that it would be a great idea to bring it here to Mercer,” Jha said.
Jha received her license to utilize TED branding in July 2020, which gave her a year to partner Mercer and TEDx.
“It was the first step of believing we were finally getting somewhere,” Jha said.
She quickly moved on to setting up her team and developing the event. This year’s speaker topic is “Embark.”
“When we were really talking about it, it was during quarantine 2020. A lot of things were changing, a lot of things were moving around and a lot of people were going through challenges,” Jha said. “We really wanted to see how people are embarking on those challenges that they’ve got through, not just in quarantine but in general, in their life.”
Jha said her team wants to encourage people to tell their stories through their research. However, the event is not limited to STEM or research-based majors; TED as a brand is not restricted to presentation of scientific research, and neither is TEDx Mercer.
“It doesn’t have to be STEM. The other day I watched this TED Talk about how this guy’s life was saved because of tea,” Jha said. “He had done an ample amount of research for him to give a TED Talk, but it wasn’t like he went to Mars, it wasn’t anything super sciency, it was a small experience he made a TEDx from.”
According to the TED website, the program is a “grassroots initiative” to show off “ideas worth spreading.” The TEDx movement hopes to initiate conversation in local communities about research, led and organized independently by a licensed TED organizer.
“These events are organized by passionate individuals who seek to uncover new ideas and to share the latest research in their local areas that spark conversations in their communities,” according to a statement on the TEDx website.
The application process requires a proposal, asks for past examples and provides a space for you to present yourself as a speaker.
“We’ve also asked them why are you the best person to talk about this topic,” Jha said. “Because when you hear TED Talks, you think, this person knows a lot about what they’re talking about.”
TEDxMercer's first event is slated for Friday, April 23 in Willingham Hall from 6 - 9 p.m.
"For our inaugural event, we will explore the word 'Embark' with our speakers presenting their diverse perspectives and what 'Embark' means to them," the organization's website reads.
Speakers will include Bonzo Reddick, associate dean of diversity, equity and inclusion and professor at Mercer University School of Medicine in Savannah, as well as Ha Van Vo, distinguished university professor of biomedical engineering and head of Mercer on Mission Vietnam. Audiences will also hear from current medical student Stormy Orlin as well as Caleb Brown, an artist, speaker and former athlete who graduated from Mercer in 2016.
(03/06/21 6:03pm)
COVID-19 has not stopped Mercer’s Center for Career and Professional Development (CCPD) from serving students daily through virtual coaching and counseling.
CCPD Executive Director Kim Meredith, a “double bear” who earned both her B.A. in service learning and her M.S. in community counseling, has worked at Mercer for 24 years. Meredith has spent 15 of those years in the CCPD. Not only does she serve as director, Meredith also serves as a one-on-one career advisor for students.
“Our number-one requested service is resume assistance,” Meredith said. “It is what brings a lot of students our way. We are resume experts, however, the resume conversation alludes into many other career services topics.”
Meredith said most students come for the resume help, but stay for help with many of the other lesser-known facets of the modern job hunt.
“I don’t mean to minimize the resume, it certainly plays a big role, but I have to tell students all the time that is your marketing collateral, and that is one piece of a competitive and modern job search,” Meredith said.
Meredith said the best way to schedule and get in touch with the CCPD is through what she called a “hidden gem,” and the “premier campus recruiting tool in the nation:” Handshake.
“My best advice is to more fully leverage Handshake,” Meredith said. “I can’t tell you how many jobs and internships and employers we are approving daily.”
Since Aug.1, Meredith reported that the CCPD has approved 673 new employers to provide Mercerians opportunities for jobs and internships to pad out their professional portfolios. But despite the wealth of opportunities, Meredith said she thinks Handshake is underused by Mercer’s students.
“There’s just a ton of opportunities in Handshake, and I think so many dormant accounts are out there with students because they haven’t logged in. They haven’t seen the value of it yet,” she said.
One student who has taken advantage of both the CCPD and Handshake is Hailey Christian, a senior majoring in public health. Christian met with the CCPD during her sophomore year and realized she wanted to not only change majors, but schools. As a result, Christian transitioned from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences to the College of Health Professions.
“There is nothing to be nervous about. They’re here to help you, and they want you to succeed,” Christian said. “You might be nervous the first time, because you might be confused on, say, if you’re trying to figure out what your major is, but it’s a very open space that you can say whatever you want, and they’ll be understanding about wherever you are on your journey.”
(02/11/21 7:56am)
The State of Georgia Legislature was not the only presiding body that addressed voter concerns about elections this year.
In its first meeting of the spring semester Jan. 25, the Mercer Student Government Association addressed student concerns, including issues students raised about class elections.
Sophomore Sen. Caleb Mills used his time in the meeting to address voter representation and accuracy in the class elections. In previous elections, he said, some students were not able to vote for the members of their class due to an error in the way students were organized in the voting system.
“I know Sen. (Harrison) Ivins had an issue with students not being able to vote according to their class,” Mills said. “I emailed the registrar to try to get some new lists made for students — for them to organize students into class by the amount of years they have been at Mercer.”
In the past, the registrar had placed students in certain voting brackets due to their credit hours, not their academic year. Mills hopes his plan will allow and encourage more students to vote for their class representatives.
Additionally, Mills is trying to address a different facet of voter representation: actual participation.
“We also have presidential elections coming up in March and senatorial elections coming up in April,” Mills said. “We are really trying to increase voter participation this year — or this semester — last semester was pretty good, I believe we were about 47% (student participation), so we are hoping to get it above halfway this semester.”
(02/10/21 10:32pm)
Each February, the Mercer community is invited to take part in Founder’s Day. This year, “double Bear” and President of Gordon State College Kirk Nooks will deliver an address at the 130th annual celebration of Founder’s Day Feb. 17.
Founder’s Day began in 1891 as a way for Mercer students to celebrate founder Jesse Mercer’s birthday and honor his life. Alumni come back to Mercer, share their stories and talk about how Mercer has impacted their lives. This year, students will gather in Hawkins Arena at 10:25 a.m. to hear Nooks share his Mercer story.
“The purpose of the day is to reconnect with the past and to hear first-hand from alumni about their undergraduate experiences at Mercer,” Vice President and Dean of Students Doug Pearson said in an email.
Nooks has previously been a guest speaker at other Mercer events, and the Student Government Association felt it would be a good idea to invite him back for a bigger event.
“Last year, he spoke at an event called ‘Living the Dream.’ It was an event kind of centered around (Martin Luther King, Jr.’s) legacy. He spoke there and he was a wonderful speaker,” said Heritage Life Committee Member Rylan Allen.
Things will be different from last year in more ways than one. With COVID-19 concerns higher than ever, SGA is enforcing social distancing and hygiene guidelines. All attendees will be required to wear masks and sit socially-distanced from each other in Hawkins Arena. Seating will be limited in order to meet these guidelines.
“We just want to try and keep everybody safe so they can enjoy the event,” Allen said.
Allen said there will not be an opportunity or need for pre-registering, but SGA will cut off attendance when Hawkins Arena is full to its socially-distanced capacity, so it would be a good idea to show up early.
During the Feb. 1 SGA meeting, Mary-Angel Ekezie, chair of the Heritage Life Committee, reminded everyone that the dress code for the event will be business formal.
Last year’s Founder’s Day speaker was Senior Magistrate U.S. District Judge Willie Louis Sands, the senior U.S. judge for the Middle District of Georgia. Sands was also a “double Bear,” receiving both his undergraduate and law degrees from Mercer.
Allen said events such as Founder’s Day are important so that students can see first-hand how alumni have embodied Mercer’s motto, “major in changing the world.”
“We want students to look at how Mercer is a very prominent institution that provides many opportunities for students in the future when they choose their career path,” Allen said. “It shows that Mercer does major in changing the world and that these people can go on and make a huge difference outside of the state of Georgia.”
(10/08/20 2:36am)
Mercer University enrolled 951 new residential undergraduate students this year, according to a Mercer press release. Inside of that, administrators also reported continued growth in Mercer’s health sciences programming.
“We have a really strong enrollment within our health sciences area,” Assistant Vice President of Enrollment Management Kelly Holloway said. “In a time of a global pandemic, students are really interested in careers within the health sciences. Public health, for example, was something that we saw an increased interest in for this year.”
Students in Mercer’s class of 2024 have an average GPA of 3.95 and an average ACT score of 28, Holloway said. As a result of COVID-19, Mercer went test-optional, but only 7% of students applied without submitting test scores this year causing that to have a minimal impact on the student profile, Holloway said.
The admissions process for new students also underwent major changes during the summer due the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the most significant changes was moving many on-campus events online, such as the annual “Make it Mercer!” event and summer orientation.
When they took things online, the admissions team found they had a lot more interaction with their students’ parents than with students.
“When safety was more of a concern than maybe it was in the past, parents were a lot more hands-on this year than what we had seen previously,” Holloway said. “We always communicate with parents, but I would say that this year was more than any other year that I have experienced. And it actually was really great. So much so that we said: ‘Why haven't we been doing this all along? We need to do more of this.’”
However, this higher level of communication with parents evolved into a new problem, Holloway said. With parents being more hands on, students began to be more hands-off.
“We typically say we aren’t asking for our parents to be hands-off — we are asking our students to be hands-on,” Holloway said.
According to Holloway, one of Mercer’s main goals is to graduate successful students. Holloway explained that Mercer’s admissions team does its best to find the students that they believe will be successful at Mercer specifically and are not just already successful students.
“While we have seen continued growth and continued demand for a Mercer education, we are not sacrificing academic quality or diversity in doing so,” Holloway said.
(09/22/20 7:52am)
Every fall, first-year students load onto charter buses and make the “Pilgrimage to Penfield,” where students go to the site of Mercer’s founding. This year, however, new students will be attending a reimagined version of Pilgrimage to Penfield Oct. 17 in Five Star Stadium as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
While students won’t be traveling to Penfield this year, Mercer’s Student Government Association's Heritage Life Committee, which organizes the event, have been working with university administration to re-strategize how the event will be held.
Despite the huge change, Heritage Life Committee Chair Mary-Angel Ekezie said Pilgrimage to Penfield will still teach students about the ideas, goals and ideals of its founders.
“It helps give us as Mercerians a sense of where we started as a school and how we progressed to become who we are today and how that legacy of how we started at Penfield, Georgia, still lives on,” Ekezie said. “Pilgrimage to Penfield is a way to honor that and those goals and aspirations that the founders of Mercer University had, and how we have taken those and evolved to become the great institution we are today.”
Ekezie said the event being in Five Star stadium rather than Penfield will not take away from the event’s usefulness for first-year students.
“I think we will still be able to engage students in that way and help them get acclimated with Mercer traditions like Pilgrimage to Penfield,” Ekezie said.
Doug Pearson, Vice President of Student Affairs, Dean of Students and the advisor to SGA, suggested that the necessary changes to hold the pilgrimage off campus would be too detrimental to the purpose of the event.
“The logistics of transporting a high number of students on buses, and through the program safely, continued to push the planning group towards having smaller numbers, which we did not like,” Pearson wrote in an email to The Cluster. “Part of the fun of the event was the trip up and back where students get to meet and interact with their classmates. Social distancing would have negatively impacted much of this. So the committee creatively thought of ways to re-envision the event in a way that could involve more students safely.”
After the individual senators on SGA were assigned to their committees and Ekezie assembled her Heritage Life Committee team, she decided to begin focusing on the pilgrimage, since that would be Heritage Life’s first main event they would put on for students this fall.
“Over the summer, we started crafting everything,” Ekezie said. “Right now we are in advertising, getting the word out about our event, and finalizing a few other details.”
The first major issue in the planning stage was the number of people that SGA wanted to have in attendance, and how much those numbers would have to be shaved down in order to keep the event safe during the pandemic. However, during their planning process, Pearson suggested a major shift in the plans: to hold the Pilgrimage on campus.
Naturally, removing the journey from the pilgrimage seems that it could lessen the impact of the pilgrimage. However, Ekezie expressed her confidence that the event would still instigate the desired movement and growth in the students.
“In past years, Pilgrimage has been just that: a journey to Penfield, Georgia,” Ekezie said. “But this year since we are keeping it on campus, we are still going to try to incorporate that feel of a pilgrimage, but I guess just at home base at Mercer.”
Ekezie said that having it on campus will still capture the evolution of Mercer as they normally do. But having it on campus instead of at Penfield may shift the focus of the event to the journey students made to get to Mercer, rather than the journey they would normally make from Mercer to Penfield under normal circumstances.
”We are working on ways to still incorporate that feel of a journey through Mercer and our history — where we started as a school, and how we progressed from that to where we are now,” Ekezie said. “I think having on campus is still going to convey that, because all the first-years who are attending have been here for about a month now. And they are still journeying from wherever they came from to Mercer, (and) discovering Mercer.”
Ekezie said the event will still have the originally intended effect: a sprout of growth among the new students. She said that by seeing how much Mercer has grown and spread out its influence from its humble beginnings at Penfield, Mercer’s students will be encouraged to push outward, expand their horizons and change the world.
“The importance of going to Penfield is for each student to reflect on their own personal journey throughout college, and how they are embarking on this journey, for themselves, to become the best versions of themselves,” Ekezie said. “In the same way, students when they come here, particularly freshmen, have the opportunity to invest in themselves, and become the best person they can be, and therefore change the world.... So yes, the main takeaway of Pilgrimage is going to Penfield, but also the personal reflection on ‘who do I want to be when I finish my time here at Mercer?’”