Detailed Program Schedule

CHECK-IN AND REGISTRATION
10:00 a.m.   Macmillan Lobby

Check in, get a bag and a schedule of events for the day and start attending sessions!

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SESSION A — 10:30 a.m.–11:20 a.m.

A1. “Resistance to hydro fracking in New York:  How citizens are working on the local and town level to protect their homes, farms, communities and water wells.”
Joseph J. Heath, Esq.         AER
General Counsel for the Onondaga Nation and Gas Drilling Awareness of Cortland County
     
The grass roots resistance movement to the oil and gas industry’s push to frack the Finger Lakes and New York is growing every day; and it is the largest grass roots movement here since the women’s rights movement.  This presentation will review what citizens are doing all across the states, in their towns, to fight back against this industry and its millions of dollars of advertising, campaign contributions and lobbying.  This is an exciting lesson in true democracy and you will hear from one of its more active speakers and organizers.  Hundreds of local groups have formed in the past few years and together, they have held of this dangerous practice that could ruin the Finger lakes and all of rural New York.  This year we face a critical juncture in this struggle and all citizens need to be informed and consider joining these efforts and those to fight climate change.

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A2.  “Predators in our Changing World: An Invisible Threat”
Candy Clark, Deborah Riester, Connie Smith, Karen Hoffman     Macmillan 121

1) What predators don’t want YOU to know!
a. Who are they?
b. How do they groom you and your child?
c. Accommodation Syndrome
d. Why children recant
2) What we do to help!
a. Advocacy Program (at Wells and Cayuga County)
b. CAC – Interviews
c. Therapy- PTSD, Recovery process, Stages of grief, Cognitive Processing Therapy and Trauma Focused-Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Children
d. Possible long-term effects if no therapy
3) Preventative Work:
a. Education
i. Rational why emphasis more on parents instead of children
ii. Our new program in schools
4) Our Future Goals- Outreach
a. How can YOU help!
b. Take Back the Night!

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A3. “Islamophobia: Not so Explosive a Concept!”
Huda Rehman and Fahad Rahmat        Macmillan 326
 
Ever been called a terrorist? No? Ever heard of Islamophobia? Maybe? Let’s try this again, come to a workshop where we ask and explain the misconceptions surrounding Island. Don’t be afraid to ask questions, after all facts fight phobia.

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A4. “Constructing Cleveland: Bringing Down the House
Melissa Fortin, Gloria Franco, Britta Kilbourn, Kelly Pietruch,      Macmillan 300
Carolyn Richardson, Justine Tibbits, Gabrielle Uhrig, Lyndsey Wells       
How did you spend your spring break?  Were you on beach down south? Relaxing at home?  Hanging out with friends?  Come hear from some of your fellow Wells students about their alternative spring break experience working with Habitat for Humanity’s Collegiate Challenge in Cleveland, OH! 
These eight students and two staff members drove to Cleveland to help build homes for families in need of new ones.  They did deconstruction and worked at Habitat’s ReStore while staying at a church mission.  To hear more about their experiences, attend this session! 

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SESSION B — 11:30 a.m.–12:20 p.m.

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B1. “The Struggle for Earth’s Liberation”
Leslie James Pickering         AER
Burning Books

A brief, detailed history of radical efforts to defend the Earth from corporate and governmental exploiters, with an emphasis placing Earth liberation within a larger multi-generational freedom struggle. Presentation will highlight crossover from “1960s” underground into environmental concerns, Earth First organizing in the 1980s, Earth Liberation Front activity throughout the 1990s and state repression of this movement currently known as the Green Scare.

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B2. “Overcoming Obstacles to Sustainability at Wells”      Macmillan 326
Dr. Linda Schwab, Rosemary Stillman ‘13, Rachel Partington ‘13 and surprise guests       
Sustainable efforts must be community-based and require ongoing community involvement. In this workshop, we aim to give participants a way to think about, structure, explore and realize their ideas for increasing sustainability at Wells.

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B3. “Youth Can Move the World: Engaging Young People in Community Building and Social Action”
Turan Sidky ‘15           Macmillan 300
The Junior Youth Empowerment Program

How do we prepare the next generation of young people to take on the challenge of conflict resolution? The Junior Youth Empowerment Program is a worldwide movement which recognizes the often overlooked capacity that young people have for engaging in meaningful social action. This initiative, inspired by the principles of the Baha’i Faith, seeks to catalyze the power of young adults who possess a sense of justice, an eagerness to learn about the universe, and a desire to contribute to the creation of a better world.
In this presentation, Turan Sidky (who has been actively involved with the JYEP), will discuss the vision of the Program, as well as his experience in Belize working to strengthen the existing Youth Empowerment groups and train new facilitators to expand the efforts of the JYEP in Belize.
  
LUNCH BREAK
12:30 p.m.-1:30 p.m.         Dining Hall 

 

Keynote Speaker- “Lessons from Grandfather”
Arun Gandhi     Phipps

1:30 p.m.-2:30 p.m.

    

AFTERNOON SESSIONS C — 2:30 p.m.–3:20 p.m.

C1. “Breakout session”
Arun Gandhi           AER

Come talk with Arun Gandhi, our keynote speaker, to discuss personal transformation, nonviolence philosophy, and the firsthand experience of growing up learning from Mahatma Gandhi. Bring any questions you may have about Mahatma Gandhi’s life, philosophy, or Arun’s own experience in nonviolence-activism. Due to the structure of a breakout session, this section will be limited to the first fifty attendees.

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C2. “Burlesque as means to empowerment.”
Azra Rahman          Macmillan 321     
Ever wondered what burlesque really is? What does it take to be part of burlesque? The Wells College Burlesque Troupe redefines burlesque and is reclaiming the traditional roots of burlesque.

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C3. “Toward a Wild Way of Life: Rethinking Activism through Henry David Thoreau and the Concept of Preservative Care”
Robert Michael Ruehl         Macmillan 326
Ph.D. candidate, Syracuse University, Department of Religion

“We have heard much of the wonderful intelligence of the beaver, but that regard for the beaver is all a pretense, and we would give more for a beaver hat than to preserve the intelligence of the whole race of beavers.” (Journal, XII, page 83) The author of this quote was a nature lover and is an American icon, but rarely do people confront Henry David Thoreau as a serious activist or to discern what his writings can tell us about extreme social transformation in the present. But what made him the radical he was for nineteenth-century America? And what has allowed him to influence people like Gandhi, King, and today’s environmental activists? It was a sympathetic consciousness attuned toward extreme otherness in distress which led him to advocate the preservation of the best in all that is degraded and suppressed. This posture of preservative care is what we can come to emulate today, which calls us to an active solidarity with all oppressed beings through a non-anthropocentric sensibility leading to a more wild or uncivilized existence. This sympathetic attunement and its resulting solidarity with all oppressed beings is a desirable destination for activists today.
      
C4. “Finding the Courage to Transform Humanity”
Gkisedtanamoogk
Wampanoag Nation and the University of Maine, Orono Maine    Stratton 304

Friday December 21, 2012 heralded in a new shift for humanity, a cosmic boost in the development of the human frontier as we enter into a new era. Presentation is an Indigenous call for addressing and responding to the critical urgency for mutli-dimension levels of human liberation

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CLOSING SPEAKER — 3:30 p.m.
Susanne Slavick and Andrew Ellis Johnson   String Room Gallery
Curator of Out of Rubble   

Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Art Susanne Slavick discusses her recent book and curatorial project on the aftermath of war. OUT OF RUBBLE (Charta 2011) presents international artists who consider its causes and consequences, its finality and future, moving from decimation and disintegration to the possibilities of regeneration and recovery.