The motion was divided so that each potential appointee could be voted on separately.

Rich Wareing and Cherita McIntye received yes votes from all present councilmembers. Matt Poland and Dr. Jose Colon-Rivas both received seven votes in favor with Councilperson MacDonald abstaining. Mayor Segarra received seven votes in favor, with only Councilperson Cotto showing objection.

Councilperson Deutsch was absent from the meeting.

During discussion, Councilperson Aponte said he “looked for candidates willing to do the hard work” and who “care about our children.”

Councilman MacDonald said he was troubled by the message that the nominees as a whole send to the community, explaining that there is a lack of diversity and too few parents. Councilperson Wooden also noted that concerns have been expressed by the public about the lack of diversity, but that he would be voting for all regardless.

MacDonald said that by Segarra appointing himself and two other City employees there are too many conflicts of interest. MacDonald cited how within the short span of his time serving on the Board of Ed and City Council simultaneously, he has had to recuse himself several times already. He suggested that such conflicts of interest would create too many opportunities for BOE members to recuse themselves during their tenure.

Councilperson Cotto objected to the Mayor serving on the Board of Education because of the conflict of interest. The rest of Cotto’s party, however, did not all follow suit. Councilperson Jennings gave her vote to all of the appointees.

Councilperson Kennedy remarked that he sees nothing wrong with lawyers, perhaps alluding to the criticism that too many lawyers are currently serving in the City.

Stokely Carmichael / Still from The Black Power Mixtape

A series of politically-themed films will be presented at Cinestudio this Spring.

The series begins Thursday night (2 Feb 2012) at 7:30 with a screening of the 2008 German film The Wave.  Professor Johannes Evelein will lead the discussion that follows. The Wave (Die Welle) is about how a high school teacher teaches his students about dictatorships by starting a social experiment.

The Black Power Mix-Tape, scheduled for February 9th, was screened at Real Art Ways last year.The film is divided into segments, one for each of the years between 1967-1975 when footage was taken. This includes archival footage of Stokely Carmichael, Eldridge Cleaver, Angela Davis, Huey P. Newton, and Bobby Seale. Seth Markle, Professor of History and International Studies at Trinity College, will lead the discussion afterwards.

The Blue Kite is scheduled for February 16th with Professor Yipeng Shen leading the discussion. On February 23rd, Professor Kiffah Hanna will speak following the screening of The Yacoubian Building.

On March 1st, My So Called Enemy, a documentary about Israeli and Palestinian girls joining a peace project will be screened. Lisa Gossels, the film’s director, will be making an appearance.

This series is part of Trinity College’s Campus Climate 2011-2012 Action Project. There are additional film dates during March and April that have yet to be confirmed.

All films are free and open to the public. For directions and parking information, see the Cinestudio website. For more information about this film series, see the Democracy in Film website.

Statistics provided by the Hartford Police Department suggest a slight increase — rather than spike — in crime for the district this campus is in:

From 2010 to 2011, crime in certain categories decreased: larceny and auto theft.

In other categories — murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, — there was an increase. In total, crime increased 1.7% from the previous year in this district.

According to the table above, crime in the Southeast District is down by 16.8% from 2009 and 24.5% from  2007.

Trinity College, located in the Barry Square neighborhood, is part of the Southeast District; the Southeast District also includes Downtown, Sheldon/Charter Oak, South End, and South Meadows.

Find the answers within the 120-page iQuilt Plan Overview that is now available.

After reading through, leave a comment with your impressions of this.

February 1st - March 2, 2012

Vejigante Masks are on display all month at the Park Branch of the Hartford Public Library.

February 2nd

The Hartford Public Library Downtown will be hosting a panel of “young union members” from 5:30-7 p.m. who will be discussing what it means to be in a union and the relevance of unions today. This free event will be held in the Seminar Room on the second floor. There is a parking lot adjacent to the library.

February 2nd through February 29th

The Charter Oak Cultural Center gallery space will be displaying photographs of tattoos created by local artists. The opening reception begins at 5:30 on February 2, 2012. Admission is free.

February 3rd and 4th

The Vagina Monologues will be performed at the Charter Oak Cultural Center — various admission fees.

February 3rd through February 8th

Urbanophiles take note: Real Art Ways will be showing a documentary — Urbanized — about the design of cities. Gary Hustwit is also the director of Helvetica, a film about typography.

February 3rd - March 18th

Improvised Reflections by Andres Chaparro will be on display in ArtWalk Gallery, an area of the Hartford Public Library. His work is vibrant and expressive, and draws inspiration from live jazz. The opening reception is on February 3rd from 6-8p.m.

February 5th

Alona Cooper Wilson, the Assistant Curator & Director of the Amistad Center for Art & Culture, will be talking about how we can learn history through artifacts. This free hour-long program begins at 2p.m. in the Hartford History Center, located in the Hartford Public Library.

February 8th

The Hartford Seminary will be hosting a free talk by Rev. Christopher Webber, author of American to the Backbone: The Life of James W.C. Pennington. Pennington, an escaped slave, was pastor at the Talcott Street Church in Hartford. This talk begins at 7p.m. The Hartford Seminary is located at 77 Sherman Street.

February 9th

Last May, Vanity Fair published a sprawling feature on sex trafficking that focused on crimes in Hartford. Officer Scates, interviewed for this piece, will be speaking on the topic of sex slavery in Connecticut at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center. Polly Marston from DCF will also be speaking at this free salon. The discussion begins at 5:30.

February 12th - 15th

Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious will be screened at Cinestudio at 7:30p.m.

February 13th

Two poets from Capital Community College will be participating in the WordForge Poetry and Reading Series. This event begins at 7 and is free. Antoinette Brim teaches African American Literature and Creative Writing; she is also the author of Psalm of the Sunflower, is a Cave Canem Foundation fellow, a recipient of the Walker Foundation Scholarship to the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and a Pushcart Prize nominee. Kenneth DiMaggio is a Humanities professor and is author of Poems and Stories from the Blue Collar Book of the Dead; he has been published in numerous journals. This event is in the Studio at Billings Forge.

February 17th

Starting at noon, the Wadsworth Atheneum will host a gallery talk about the intersection of activism and art.

February 20th

This is the last day for ice skating in Bushnell Park. Don’t squander it!

February 23rd

A forum about pollution will explore why children living in cities have a higher risk of asthma and what can be done about it. This free forum at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center begins at 5:30.

February 23rd - 26th

For the price of a couple margaritas, you can wander about a building filled with flowers, pretending to be in some warm and exotic place. You can also bring soil from your backyard (well, from anywhere, really) to be tested. The CT Flower and Garden Show will be at the Connecticut Convention Center.

February 26th

The Hartford History Center, located in the Hartford Public Library, will be hosting the artist talk: “Exploring the Underground Railroad, Stories in Quilt and Canvas.” Artist Robert Charles Hudson will be discussing his sources of inspiration and technique at this free event, from 1-3 in the afternoon.

Elsewhere that evening, there will be a red carpet event with a red carpet price tag. Proceeds go to a worthy cause. The VIP reception begins at 6; regular admission begins at 7.

For those seeking a more low-key adventure, the Hartford Organizing Group is screening How to Start a Revolution at the Charter Oak Cultural Center at 7. Free admission.

Sundays

Along with the Hartford Jazz Society and WWUH, the Hartford Public Library continues to sponsor free jazz concerts on Sunday afternoons. The shows begin at 3 in the afternoon and last one hour.

February 5th — Taino Pacheco

February 12th — Sinan Bakir

February 19th — Goza Brazilian Jazz

February 26th — Ricky Alfonso

These shows have gained popularity, so much so that it was standing room only in the Hartford Public Library fifteen minutes before the last show in January began. If you want a seat, plan to be there at least thirty minutes before showtime.

Thursdays

The Farmers’ Market at Billings Forge is not new. That it operates during the winter is not new either. They did, however, recently change their hours to 11-2. The market is located on Broad Street between Capitol and Russ.

Many Days

The Wadsworth Atheneum will be screening Glory and Cold Mountain, free of charge, on several days.

—

What other events should people know about?

The Connecticut Science Center and the City of Hartford are partnering to offer grants up to $15,000 for projects related to the applied sciences, technology, or other innovations not connected to education or the arts. The awards can be used for capital projects, materials, or equipment.

There’s a catch: you can’t be wealthy to get this.

The Community Development Block Grant Program authorizes HUD to fund this, so applicants will need to meet their low- and moderate-income requirements.

There are a few other guidelines. Applicants should either own/rent space in Hartford for the business or live here. Businesses with more than five employees are not eligible.

Applications are not due until March 19th, but there are two public information sessions and a technical assistance session before then. The first info session is from 10-11:30 a.m. on February 4th at the Connecticut Science Center. The second info session is offered from 6-7:30 in the evening on February 8th.

The guidelines and application for the grant are available for download.

]]> http://www.realhartford.org/2012/01/27/business-development-grants-for-innovation/feed/ http://www.realhartford.org/2012/01/27/mascaras-de-vejigante-at-park-branch-of-the-hpl/ http://www.realhartford.org/2012/01/27/mascaras-de-vejigante-at-park-branch-of-the-hpl/#comments Fri, 27 Jan 2012 23:31:10 +0000 Kerri Provost http://www.realhartford.org/?p=11710 On a dreary day in January, artist Angel Sánchez Ortiz delivered dozens of his vejigante masks to the Park Library. The artist — formerly of Holyoke, now living in Delaware — demonstrated that these pieces of artwork are not meant only to be displayed on the wall. They can be worn. Some have movable pieces, like jaws that open and close.

The brightly painted papier mâché and coconut masks are like those seen in the Carnival de Ponce in Puerto Rico, an event comparable to the Mardi Gras. The vejigante mask is often meant to be frightening.

These masks will be on view at the Park Branch of the Hartford Public Library from February 1, 2012 through March 2, 2012. This branch is located at 744 Park Street.

While careful to say Trinity does not want to cut itself off from the community, administrators described how the college may add cameras, fencing and police to the periphery, along with potential changes to the landscape:

January 25, 2012

Dear Trinity Students, Faculty, Staff, and Parents,

We write to update you on our efforts to improve campus safety at Trinity. As mentioned in our previous message to the campus community, we want to be deliberate in our efforts to make changes that are effective and lasting. We have visited other campuses in the Bronx, Boston, New Haven, and Bridgeport to examine best practices at other urban institutions. We have met with private security consultants and will, as mentioned in our previous email, host a visiting team of campus safety professionals who will do an external review of our staffing, protocols, training programs, and allocation of resources. We have also heard many constructive ideas from students, staff, and parents. While we want to make sure we factor in all the expert advice we can get, it is increasingly evident that we need to make some critical changes.

Back in December we told you that we would increase the number of officers on patrol and improve lighting. Under the leadership of Director Charles Morris, the Campus Safety staff has organized a tactical patrol of five additional officers during the hours of 8:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. who will focus on the periphery of campus in the areas of Summit Street, Crescent Street, and College property on Allen Place. We will be hiring five additional officers to permanently staff this team and rely on overtime until we are able to hire additional officers. We have, working with students from the Campus Climate Council, identified several areas on campus where we are adding new lighting and we have replaced or upgraded 275 lights across campus. We have also put in place an auditing program to ensure prompt repair when a light is not working. These efforts will increase the visibility of our Campus Safety patrols and provide better and more lighting. But we realize these efforts alone are not sufficient to make our community feel as safe as we would like.

We have received a formal proposal from the SGA and have heard from some faculty and staff and numerous parents and students that we need to do more to monitor access to the campus at certain times of the day. We have no intention of withdrawing our welcome to the local community to enjoy the benefits we extend to them, but we need to do more to discourage criminal activity that undermines safety and creates resentment and fear instead of appreciation for the assets of Hartford. At its meeting last week, the Board of Trustees authorized us to explore strategies for how we can do more to manage the routes of access to the campus. We are in the process of selecting a security consulting firm to help us determine the feasibility of such a plan. It would most likely require some additional fencing, landscaping, and cameras in critical areas and could mean providing internal access to some of the parking areas on the periphery of campus that are currently accessed from the city streets to allow for controlled access.

We want to hear from the campus community as we develop our plans. We also want to assure you that we have no intention of separating ourselves from Hartford and diminishing the mutually beneficial relationship we have with our neighborhood and the city. That is a relationship we want to see grow. Our focus remains on providing the highest level of safety and security for all members of our campus community.

We will write again to update you on our planning process as soon as we have the recommendations of the consultant and our visiting team. In the meantime we wish all of you the best for the new semester.

Very truly yours,

James F. Jones, Jr.

President and Trinity College

Professor in the Humanities

Frederick Alford

Dean of Students

None of the added safety measures address the most common types of crimes that occur on college campuses, which involve students violating the rights of other students, nor does it address how students are violating their own safety through binge drinking.

The 2011 Campus Safety Annual Report indicates a large number of disciplinary actions take for drugs and alcohol on campus, but only a small amount of actual arrests for those crimes:

2011 Campus Safety Report

2011 Campus Safety Report

There is no language in the annual report that suggests that any of the reported crimes were committed by individuals not part of the college community.

The weekly safety reports posted on the Trinity College Campus Safety page provide more details about the nature of crimes occurring there.

During one week in November 2011, there were four alcohol incidents, two of which resulted in hospital trips — one to the Children’s Hospital:

From September 25, 2011 - October 2, 2011, there were a number of alcohol incidents that resulted in eight individuals (seven students and one visitor) taken by EMS to Hartford Hospital for observation and treatment. During the week of September 17, 2011 - September 24, 2011, there were four students taken to Hartford Hospital for observation after drinking. In a separate incident that week, a student was actually arrested for DUI because he drove through a fence and almost into the Campus Pizza restaurant.

Another student received disciplinary action for receiving 1/4 pound of marijuana in the mail:

Weekly reports from the Fall 2011 semester reflect other types of crime too — like a student fleeing a cab to avoid paying his fare.

Much of the reported crime involved thefts when individuals left belongings in unlocked rooms or when they gave their room codes to others.

One week, the entire (approximately 1000 copies) campus newspaper was stolen, presumably because a group on campus was unhappy with an article written about them.

In September 2011, a student reported verbal harassment by other students. This harassment involved homophobic language.

The assaults and robberies were described with inconsistency. Some include no description of the assailant, but others are attributed to groups of African American or Hispanic men. No explanation was given for the absence of physical descriptions in most of the reports. Only a handful of reports indicate that the criminal was in fact neither a student nor visitor.

President Jones or Dean Alford have stated “we want to hear from the campus community as we develop our plans,” regarding campus safety measures. President Jones can be contacted through his two assistants by email or phone.

UPDATE (1 Feb 2012): Six days after this piece was published, the Courant ran an editorial “Spike in Crime Poses Dilemma for Trinity” (31 Jan 2012). In addition, a reader alerted me to a discussion happening on Facebook during January about Trinity College campus safety; the discussion includes this remark:

In all sincerity, what reason do Hartford locals have for being on our campus at 8pm or later?

That question deserves an answer. Cinestudio, which is located on the Trinity campus, is a theater independent of the college. This is one reason for “Hartford locals” to be on campus after 8pm. Also, typical of most colleges and universities, Trinity schedules events that are open to the public, such as the annual Chamber Music Series. In addition, showing goodwill for the community it is located within, Trinity College has permitted the use of some of its buildings for NRZ meetings. Those are all widely accepted reasons for locals being on college campuses after dark.

Starting on Monday, January 30th, students at Pathways to Technology Magnet High will have the both the opportunity to create something resume-worthy: apps.

This curriculum is being piloted here and in only four other schools nationwide. The program was designed by Lenovo, a technology manufacturing firm, which has provided Pathways with thirty ThinkPad tablets and six ThinkCentre HD All-in-one computers. The National Academy Foundation is collaborating on this.

This class, to be taught by Raul Vargas, will allow the eighteen students to work together to brainstorm ideas for apps, create a business plan, and then do the coding and development necessary to make them work. After this, the school will select the best app idea and send it off to experts.

So long as it fits into their schedules, students of all grade levels at Pathways will be eligible to enroll in this course.