I visited the GOP headquarters in Columbia, South Carolina today and had the opportunity to speak with Executive Director Hope Walker. She was very informative and shared a detailed breakdown of the various chairs and the important work they are doing within the organization. It was a great and insightful visit overall. 

     Yesterday, Meg Kinnard came to introduce herself and share with us her experience within the journalism field. I found her completely inspiring, and her story resonated deeply with me. Specifically her akiness to objectivity. She said, "If you get to the end of one of my stories and feel you know my side, I've done a bad job". She also spoke of her background and origins in politics, which began at a young age supporting her uncle on his campaign trail. Her grandfather was a blue dog conservative representative of Tenessee, Ed Jones. I later had the pleasure of meeting Jay Parmley, the executive director at the SCDP(South Carolina Democratic Party). It alludes to how the topic of the conversation came about, but we got to talking about blue-dog Democrats. A term I never really had a name for before this trip. It essentially refers to Democrats with conservative tendencies. They've also been described as a more moderate Democrat or a fiscally responsible Democrat...

I'm working on the Nikki Haley campaign alongside another cohort in a program of 24 students. There's something both profound and exhilarating in rooting for the underdog. My biases in wanting a woman of color to be in the most pertinent position of power trumps her faulty policy. Still, a presidential candidate must stand on a platform well-rounded enough to encompass all my preferences. Yesterday, in a contemporary political theory lecture, we discussed Gurri's Revolt of the Public and his solution to the fifth wave. It is a complete transparency to a governmental conversation with pertinent security detrimental information being permissible to be discussed without being relayed to the public. Some students argued that it would cause a detriment to an already complex information climate. Professor Walker, Ph.D., raised the point that grand forms of community existed in a generation older than my own. Communities centered around the church, the outdoors, and the communitie...

photo by: Alfred Stieglitz The  Fountain  is a comical representation of contemporary sculpture. The fact that the sculpture has been replicated speaks volumes about how minimal skill is necessary to divulge this piece. What is the point? Why would an artist conceal their identity? These two questions are explicitly linked. Marcel Duchamp chose to conceal his identity to push critics’ boundaries and broaden the horizon of what is considered acceptable art. Fountain was first created in 1917 and replicated in 1964. Marcel Duchamp vandalized an outdated urinal comprised of porcelain-like material. The only apparent manipulations of the urinal are the scuff marks at the front of the bowl and the date of the work alongside the artist's signature. The sculpture places the viewer in the imagery of the subject because of the typical interaction with the everyday object. Through the usage of Panofsky and Fry’s theories, the work will be examined, highlighting the ineptitude of this wo...