The David Letterman Communication and Media Building lobby, normally populated with silent students focused only on their laptops, hosted a different sort Thursday.
The work of 18 student projects highlighting issues of diversity lined the perimeter of the hall at “Communication and Culture: Dialoguing the Difference,” an event sponsored by the College of Communication, Information, and Media and the CCIM Diversity Interest Group.
Observers strolled from table to table, examining displays and listening to students primarily from the CCIM describe their chosen topics, some of which have been in production for almost a year.
Aline Beteringhe, an anthropology graduate student, stood next to a horizontal poster displaying the wrinkled visage of a Native American.
Beteringhe, along with 12 other students involved in an immersive learning course, researched and filmed a documentary about the Lenape Native Americans, widely referred to as Delaware Indians.
The Lenape, originally from the East Coast, lived in the Muncie area from the late 1700s to the 1820s, in a period of 30 years, said Beteringhe.
“Even if they didn’t spend a lot of time in Indiana, they actually left a lot of heritage,” she said.
Their influence even extended to Muncie’s name, which Beteringhe said refers to a Lenape dialect and not the name of a Native American chief.
Preproduction for Beteringhe’s documentary called “The Lenape on the Wapahani River” began in April 2013 with extensive research on the tribe, she said.
Eight of the students involved traveled to Oklahoma, the current location of the Lenape. They hoped to hear their account of the Lenape’s time in East Central Indiana.
Summer jobs and weather led to an arrangement where Beteringhe and her fellow documentarians traveled 12 hours to Buffalo, N.Y., in May 2013 for a weekend before returning to Ball State for school. The next weekend, the group repeated the process. This time however, they traveled to the reservation in Oklahoma.
“The Lenape are still considered the grandfather of all the tribes,” Beteringhe said. ”They’re place in the history of Native Americans is still very important. They’re actually one of the tribes that were moved the most form one place to the other. Every 30 years, they moved a little farther. With all of this, they survived.”
Beteringhe’s project fell under the category of creative based endeavors. Both research based and creative projects were at the event. The elite of each category received an award for top project or honorable mention.
Monique Armstrong and Ro-Anne Royer Engle, judges of the creative projects said they evaluated the different student ventures based on the quality of the presentation as well as their success in capturing the theme of the event.
“What’s important to me is the process,” Armstrong said. “This is an educational experience for the students that are present today. I want to know how they’re going to apply the experience in the future, how they overcome obstacles and why they’re here.”
For Engle, the most intriguing aspect of the event was the variety of projects and the thought process that went into selecting each topic.
As the event continued, people stopped and talked to the student presenters.
Cameron McMullen, a junior public communications major, continued to wander from booth to booth.
He said he came for extra credit for his communications class, but stayed for the stimulating material.
“I just found it very interesting to get different perspectives on other people’s lives,” he said. “They’re kind of focusing on a lot of the problems in our society and a lot of the things we’re missing and we’re not noticing.”
The deciding moment of the event came at the conclusion.
In the creative category, Beteringhe and seven other students’ story of a Native American tribe that migrated across the United States’ received the top honor while Sam Courter, Rachel Hopkins and Natalie Guyon’s work on violence against women in the media won honorable mention.
The top research project was a look at the media’s disproportionate fascination with white and attractive missing children only by Stephanie Spain. The honorable mention for a research project went to Samantha Bilbrey’s project called “A Neo-Aristotelian Criticism of the Rhetoric of Rep. Jim McGovern.”
The event held more than just classroom projects. Panels revolving around diversity in the workplace and hosted by media professionals also enlightened the public.
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