My team and I intend to look into the past of James Madison University in the hopes of uncovering the student-led protests that took place on campus. In an effort to share this information we will be creating an interactive Adobe Spark Page (Glideshow) that documents and displays the silent history of campus protests. On this page, viewers will be able to explore and learn the ways in which JMU students and faculty interacted with both the local and global conflicts of their time. We are hoping to find an abundance of photographs, newspaper articles, and items that were involved in the protests as we continue our research and utilize the JMU Special Collections Office. We are also looking for first-hand accounts of the protests, whether they be from interviews or videos or recordings that can be incorporated into the page. These items will be incorporated into an interactive activity within the webpage that the viewers can click on and learn about the protest the item was involved in.
My artifact is a digital copy of a newspaper article that was published in The Breeze, JMU’s campus newspaper. This article, titled “Speaker incites protests from students and locals” describes a protest that took place against Oliver North. There is a long and silent history of campus protests at James Madison University, this newspaper article published in The Breeze discusses one such protest. This article was published on April 27, 1989, and covers the protest against Oliver North and his involvement in the Iran-Contra Affair. North delivered a speech at James Madison University in front of 3,500 supporters and protesters. Many anti-North Protesters gathered at the main entrance of the JMU Convocation Center, these protesters included JMU students and Harrisonburg residents alike. Not only did this protest attract fellow Dukes but also students from other universities including George Mason University, Liberty University, and Eastern Mennonite College. All of these universities and colleges are still around today.
James Madison University prides itself on the relationship the university has with the Harrisonburg community, through this newspaper article from 1989 we can still see that this relationship remains strong. We can also see how the university interacted with global conflicts. In addition to the inclusion of artifacts that were present during the protests conducted on campus, images of what the areas look like today will be included, in an effort to help viewers to visualize the area in which the protest occurred. This article is valuable to the goal of the team’s website because it describes an event on campus in response to a broader, more global conflict that not many people have heard about. The ways in which previous Dukes conducted these acts of rebellion are a part of the campus history not many are knowledgeable about. The protests are part of the cultural and historical development of James Madison University and the development of the Duke identity. This is the kind of information my team and I hope to lay out in a visually appealing, easily navigable, and interactive web page.
Powell, Jennifer. “Speaker incites protests from students and locals”. The Breeze 27 Apr. 1989: 2 JMU Scholarly Commons web. 23 Mar. 2019.
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