Movember

One of the big philanthropies that my fraternity, SigEp, is promoting is Movember.  Now we have gotten all of the IFC involved and we are having competitions against each other to see who can raise the most money and have the best mustaches.  It has also evolved into a competition between TCU IFC and Baylor’s IFC.  This was started in Australia by guys who thought it would be cool to grow mustaches to start a conversation about men’s health.  Now, they are a huge foundation that raises money through donations and raises awareness by having people pledge to grow mustaches for all of November.  While I was not blessed by Mother Nature with luscious facial hair (or any facial hair for that matter), I see and support other men around campus showcasing their ‘staches and I have seen the way it sparks conversation and interest in helping to fight against illnesses such as prostate cancer, testicular cancer, mental illness, and physical inactivity.  This sudden change in the visual culture at TCU has helped tremendously with fundraising as SigEp, by ourselves, has already raised about $3000 twelve days into November.

Jack Hymel

Christmas in November

The other day, as I was heading back to Milton Daniel from the BLUU, I noticed that some of the folks who put up decorations around campus set up a giant purple ribbon/wreath-type decoration on the pillar outside the dorm, obviously meant to represent the holidays (mostly Christmas). Immediately the people around me went to two different places: one was “Oh yay, Christmas decorations!” and the other was “They’re already putting those up?” This reminded me of how many people share that sentiment around the country, because nowadays, so many stores and even individuals are putting up decorations before it even hits Thanksgiving. I correlated this as a ploy by companies; they know that decorating for Christmas is something most love, so they do it early in order to get us to buy stuff. To me, it represents how a huge part of our visual culture has been turned into a marketing scheme, and how sadly, it seems to work; now even our university is starting to put up decorations before the holiday season.

Michael Smart

Capturing Sports

Does this capture the art of horseback riding?  This photo depicts my roommate in a jumping competition a few weeks ago.  As a good roommate, I went to support her at her favorite sport and pastime and decided to try and take a few photos of her jumping. While I was doing this, I realized that by me focusing on taking photos, I wasn’t able to really watch the entirety of what Emma was doing as I was only stationed at one jump and only saw what my camera lens saw.  Due to this realization, I wondered if sports photographers and journalists think this same way.  Do they sacrifice watching the game to capture iconic photos that will sell?  Sometimes one has to drop the camera in order to pay attention to what’s going on and have an actual memory of an event, like your roommate’s horse competition.

by Teal Weaver

Just Do It

As I was working on my annotated bibliography in the library, I noticed an interesting advertisement scrolling across the library desktops.  This advertisement promoted an information session for a summer internship at the Nike headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon.  This moment was especially relevant because I was working on my research paper about the visual culture of Nike in our society and their advertising strategies.  I thought that this experience was especially reflective of how prevalent Nike is in our culture.  The Nike swoosh is such a powerful and iconic symbol worldwide, and I thought it was interesting that it is even a part of TCU visual culture.  I was shocked at the coincidence that as I was working on a paper on how dominant a role Nike plays in our culture, a promotion for the company popped onto my computer.

–Noah Ryan