A Plethora of People

Para has instructed for two years at the English Language Institute at Syracuse University, where international students can learn English before enrolling in classes at the university. She graduated from SU in 2018 with a linguistics degree and accepted a part-time job in the linguistics department teaching an English course for Non-Native speakers.

Just as Para began to fall in love with teaching English to international students, a full-time job opened up in the ELI, and she’s been teaching ever since.

“Teaching English literature, or writing, or presentation skills — in addition to American culture and learning about a student’s culture — is just beyond anything that I would ever want,” Para said. “I can’t really picture myself doing anything else.”

The ELI teaches English at five levels of ability, from a class for those who can’t speak any English, to one for those that are almost ready for regular instruction in SU classrooms. The three components of instruction are writing, grammar, and speaking.

Along with the language instruction comes cultural instruction: places to go around Syracuse, do’s and don’ts in a lecture hall, class presentation, public speaking practice, and more.

Para works with students young and old, each arriving in Syracuse with a different level of English proficiency — and each with a different story.

“I’ve had students that are in their 50s, I’ve had students that are well-known optometrists in their villages or towns, and they’ve been doctors for 20 years, and then they come here because they want to be a doctor in America,” Para said. “So it’s easy to see an international student or an international person and be like ‘I already know your story,’ but it’s just so much more than we could ever really imagine.”

In addition to teaching, Para runs the Conversation Partners Program, which pairs 30-45 international students with American students. The partners meet weekly to talk for an hour about whatever topics they want.

The program gives international students a chance to practice their casual English and small talk, which can’t fully be taught in a classroom.

Para said there is a misconception that international students want to be left alone. In fact, those who join the program are grateful for the opportunity to shoot the breeze.

“They do want to talk, they want to get to know the culture, they want to get to know slang, they want to be able to participate,” Para said.

American students stand to learn from their conversation partners as well. Para hopes that, through conversation, students will learn about each other’s cultures and, in the process, become more connected with their international peers.

Kim saw New York City colleges as a potential escape from the suburbs of Sacramento, California, but ultimately she enrolled in SU’s film program.

Kim said she isn’t working on any personal film projects at the moment, but she still feels artistically fulfilled from her extracurricular pursuits. She writes for Jerk magazine and a podcast called “Hit and B—-” that she co-hosts with her friends. On top of that, Kim frequently finds herself helping out on set for her friends and fellow film students.

As diversity chair of Delta Kappa Alpha, SU’s professional cinematic fraternity, Kim hosts diversity panels and facilitates conversations on diversity, representation, and inclusion problems in the entertainment industry.

She interns at The Creative Process, a nonprofit traveling art exhibition and collective that promotes work from artists, writers, and filmmakers from around the world, including students. Kim edits the collective’s podcast, among other duties.

“I write for their collective on Medium; I can pretty much write about anything,” Kim said. “I try to promote other artists on campus.”

Though Kim works to improve the experiences of others, her own time at SU has been a mixed bag. A lack of diversity in the curriculum and a dearth of funding for the film program negatively impacted her first few semesters.

“Going to a predominately white institution, it’s interesting,” Kim said. “I realized these things affect my life more than I thought they would.”

Outside the classroom, Kim’s time at SU has been marked by last year’s spree of hate crimes and subsequent #NotAgainSU movement.

While she didn’t expect SU to be an accepting utopia, Kim was nonetheless shocked to witness a slew of such intense hatred coming from her own student body. Kim said it was embarrassing to see SU in news headlines for hate crimes.

As a queer woman of color, Kim understands what it means to be marginalized. She labors toward inclusivity and community mindfulness.

“People don’t realize how much we affect the community — not just on campus, but literally Syracuse as a whole,” Kim said. “Just listen to other people. And just freaking care about people.”

Kim has had some good times here, too, like exploring the different parts of Syracuse and trying new restaurants. Kim said she thinks some students are afraid of straying too far from campus but is confident that if those students do venture out of their comfort zones, they will be glad they did.

“If you’re being as safe as possible then yeah, I would totally encourage other people to go out more, and then I would hope that the university does that, too,” Kim said. “There are so many little hidden places that you can go.”

Such is the life of a devoted Russian literature professor. Burak, a 68-year-old Syracuse native and graduate of Henninger High School, has taught at Syracuse University since 1984 and has read Brothers Karamazov cover to cover almost 30 times. She rereads the novel with her class in her LIT 226 course “Tolstoy and Dostoevsky,” in which she also teaches her favorite book, Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.

Burak is the granddaughter of Ukrainian immigrants and grew up immersed in Slavic culture, but it was a Tolstoy course at SUNY Oswego that truly initiated her fascination with the Russian literary tradition. In 1980, she began taking part-time courses at SU in Russian literature and linguistics, and after 13 years, received a Doctorate of Arts in the subject.

Burak said that storytelling, oral and literary, has always been a foundational component of Slavic culture.

“People were storytellers, they were always storytellers,” Burak said. “That tradition is so deeply embedded in Russian literature that anyone who cares to engage can learn something about life by reading Russian literature.”

For over 30 years, Burak also served as the director of the Sluztker Center for International Services, for which she received a lifetime achievement award from the Association of International Educators. She stepped down from her post in 2018 in order to teach literature full-time. Among other responsibilities at the center, Burak served as an advisor counselor for international students, a role that saw her constantly interacting with different cultures.

Burak brings that holistic cultural perspective to her literature courses. She strives to demonstrate to students that all cultures, regardless of intricacies and distinctions, share universal experiences and basic principles — and that the study of literature is the best way to understand these components of the human experience.

“People have different attitudes about the literature, but almost every student at the end of the day —at the time when they would write their evaluations about the course — would say that it gave them something deeper in their life,” Burak said.

Each student makes their own conclusion about the complex characters within the assigned texts, which makes for lively classroom discussions.

Sometimes, the debate isn’t about characters, but rather, the author. She recalled how in the 1980s, Russian international students would come to her office and asked, bewildered, “Why are you teaching Solzhenitsyn? We never read Solzhenitsyn!”

Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s novels like In the First Circle and A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich drew on the author’s eight years spent in a gulag and were so critical of the government that the Soviet Union stripped him of citizenship in 1974.

Shortly before Solzhenitsyn’s death in 2008, Burak managed to nominate him for an honorary degree from SU, one of only two such honors he ever accepted.

“To my mind, that was the epitome of my blending my careers, Russian literature, and international education,” Burak said.

Burak said she understood the perspective of those Russian students but would insist on the value of Solzhenitsyn’s work. She would talk to those Russian students for hours — often losing track of time — and to her, this is exactly what good literature ought to do: start debates and discussions between passionate readers searching for higher truth.

An Art Activist

Andy Mager leverages art to support social justice activism across the country through his non-profit, Syracuse Cultural Workers.

Social movements need signs. And in Central New York, Andy Mager and his coworkers at Syracuse Cultural Workers are the sign-makers.

Mager, 59, is a sales manager and social movements liaison for the small business, which publishes calendars, posters, cards, t-shirts, and other products related to sustainability, social justice, and peace. Located on Lodi Street, Syracuse Cultural Workers has supplemented local activism since its founding in 1982. It grew out of the work of the Syracuse Peace Council, a local community organizing activist group.

“There’s a rich history in Syracuse and the broader [Central New York} community, of people standing up and acting for justice, so we are very proud to be part of that tradition,” Mager said.

Mager, who grew up on Long Island, has been connected to SCW since 1982 and began working on staff in the summer of 2014. He works on wholesale accounts with 400 stores nationwide and is also a member of the creative team responsible for product development.

“We’re a completely mission-driven business so that our purpose for existing is to support organizations and movements and people working to make progressive social change,” Mager said. “So we think it’s very important that the messages on our products reflect that mission and those values.”

The vast majority of SCW products are created and produced here in the US. Producers often incorporate union labor in the finished product, and the organization will not support products manufactured in sweatshops.

Mager is not one of the primary designers at SCW, but described art as a fundamental part of human culture.

“I don’t define myself as an artist so much, but I have always had a passion for social justice, and have always understood that images are a powerful and important way to convey information,” Mager said. “So yes, I believe in the power of art and duty to help people understand the world, and hopefully to understand the experience of other people different from themselves.”

The influence of powerful imagery was demonstrated this summer, when “Black Lives Matter” and “In Our America” signs — both SCW products — became ubiquitous across the city of Syracuse.

“There weren’t lots of them that you saw here in Syracuse until this summer, as people began to respond to the murder of George Floyd and wanted to raise their voices in solidarity,” Mager said.

This summer may have been the first time many Syracuse residents took action in support of Black Lives Matter, but it certainly was not for the folks at SCW. Since 2016, the business has paid royalties for all of the BLM-themed products that it has sold to the local Syracuse BLM chapter.

SCW’s work isn’t confined to the city; during the #NotAgainSU protests on SU’s campus, SCW rallied support for student demonstrators and encouraged folks to lobby Chancellor Kent Syverud to negotiate in good faith with the students.

Mager said the key to making a change in Syracuse is for people to come together in their communities, organize, and find ways to pressure the city government, following the example of concerned Syracusans who protested for the removal of the divisive Christopher Columbus statue downtown.

“It’s easier to swap out a statue than it is to transform an economic and social system which has disenfranchised people for many many decades,” Mager said, “But nonetheless, we remain confident that we can make the changes that are needed.”

A History Maker

Jessica Elliot, a Syracuse resident and SU doctoral candidate, reflects on divisions between the campus on the hill and city just blocks away.

Jessica Elliot isn’t just passionate about Black history; she is Black history.

At Nottingham High School, she introduced the first African American history course in the Syracuse City School District; it is now taught district-wide. As director of programming for the Dunbar Association, the oldest Black organization in Syracuse, Elliot works to improve the quality of life for people in her community. When she finishes her dissertation, she will become the second Black woman to receive a doctorate in the subject of history from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University and the first to specialize in American history.

“How long has this university been in existence?” Elliot said. “Why am I the first?”

In spite of the university’s commitments to diversity, Elliot said her historic degree demonstrates the disconnect between SU and the Black residents of Syracuse.

“The city is the town, SU is the gown. The gown never wants to get dirty, the gown wants to protect itself,” Elliot said. “I’m saying that primarily because that is the lived experience of all of the Black people who live at the bottom or around that hill.”

With her dissertation, Elliot looks to examine that experience. Her project concerns African American migration to northern cities, a history that traditionally focuses on larger cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, and Detroit.

Elliot’s dissertation centers on the Black people who came to Syracuse, the Black spaces that developed and flourished, and the subsequent segregation and destruction of areas like the 15th Ward.

“Most of the space where that campus is used to be a Black space,” Elliot said, “but because of urban renewal, because of the policies set forth and put into practice by [former] Mayor [James] Walsh, those black spaces are gone.”

This destruction directly benefited SU, and contributed to the barriers between SU’s campus and the surrounding predominantly Black neighborhoods. Elliot believes that SU actively maintains these divisions.

“There is a very clear ‘Do Not Enter’ sign on that campus if you are Black, and if you are from this city,” Elliot said. “We understand very, very well that we are not wanted on that campus. I just happen to do what the hell I want to do, and nobody’s going to tell me that I can’t go anywhere.”

Elliot, remembering a class trip with Nottingham students to SU campus, said a Department of Public Safety officer approached her and her class, many of whom were Black, to ask her what they were doing on campus.

“Very early on, they’re made to feel like they’re not wanted there,” Elliot said.

The university contributes to this harmful perception in multiple ways: DPS text alerts, signs on campus near black spaces declaring “this area is under surveillance,” and rhetoric on campus that encourages students to avoid areas that order Black spaces, such as Thornden Park.

“You have to pay attention to how the media plays into larger policies and larger practices that are happening in the city,” Elliot said. “You’ve got people on the campus who are told not to come to the South Side because it is a Black space, period.”

Elliot maintains that correcting historic wrongs in Syracuse requires institutional change, and places the onus on the white beneficiaries of racist systems.

“Black people weren’t consulted in creating systems of racism and discrimination, so it shouldn’t fall to us to deconstruct them,” Elliot said.

A Football Coach

Curtis Chaplin doubles as an activist and a football coach for young children, inspiring the entire community.

A pack of young athletes with flags attached at the hip motor around Thornden Park’s football field. The road above is lined with parked cars, containing attentive parents who survey the action below. Among the dozen young players ripping towards the end zone, runs a tall, broad-shouldered man: their coach, Curtis Chaplin.

The founder of Option Zero, Chaplin is a veteran and boxer who created a program to mentor kids by teaching life skills through athletic endeavors. Option Zero uses boxing and football to reinforce discipline, work ethic, and self-control in children.

Coming out of the National Guard, Chaplin founded the gym in 2014 after he began training with the goal of becoming a professional boxer.

Since then, he has shifted his focus from being the fighter in the ring toward being the coach in the corner. There are about 40 children currently enrolled in the program, and he has begun offering adult classes.

Option Zero offers a vital chance for kids to be carefree and play outside. Chaplin said the program also provides a productive outlet for the anger and aggression that all children naturally have.

“Why do we condemn people for being who they naturally are?” Curtis asked, explaining his belief that all humans have a violent streak in them. Without a productive outlet for violent thoughts, this rage can boil over.

“I’m not an advocate for stopping the violence,” Chaplin said. “I say, use the violence in a more constructive way.”

Option Zero is about more than just violence and aggression, though. Many parents sign their children up because they want them to learn self-confidence, among other things.

Chaplin earned local renown this summer as a fledgling leader of the Last Chance For Change (LCFC) movement, a Syracuse-based group that formed in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in May. The group organized protests against police brutality, gathering hundreds of protesters to march for 40 days straight. And for 40 days, Chaplin could be seen heading up the march, tirelessly working for the children of his community.