Paige Hassen: JRN

Central Michigan University had the week of Jan. 15-19, 2024, as their yearly celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy.

Events kicked off on Monday morning with a Community Peace Service, followed by a Day of Service in collaboration with the Mary Ellen Brandell Volunteer Center and an afternoon of snacks and conversation in the CSID office in the Bovee University Center.

Donzaleigh Abernathy, goddaughter to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was the keynote speaker for the week on Wednesday night at 6pm in the Bovee University Center Rotunda.

Thursday’s event was It Starts with Me: a Dr. Martine Luther King, Jr. Showcase, held from 6:00 to 8:00pm in the Bioscience Bldg. room 1010. This event saw students celebrating his legacy in different creative ways they saw fit. Some examples include a jazz band performance, cultural dance performances, poems, etc.

Malcolm Vinson was the committee member in charge of the Charity Basketball Game, which took place at 6:00pm, the night of Friday, Jan. 19 in the Student activity center.

The Charity Basketball Game is an MLK Jr. Week tradition here at CMU, where they ask for donations in the form of non-perishable goods to give to the food pantry upon arrival to the game.

“It’s just a great community service event where you can watch some friends and family play and just have a good time,” said Vinson.

The game itself is a fun way to end the week’s celebrations, as Vinson created a team of students to play against CMU faculty members.

“The process started around November,” said Vinson. “I first looked at the community… I wanted to get a diverse group of MAC scholars so we can get a lot of people from the MAC Scholar Program to come out.”

The Charity Basketball game was played with two teams: one of students and one faculty.

“I also just wanted a lot of diversity, because that’s something that MLK stood for,” said Vinson.

Vinson and his team have a goal of a value of $500 of non-perishable food, a goal based off an increase from the $400 they received last year.

“Donations are appreciated, they’re not mandatory,” said Vinson. “We want to get to 500 this year… so the food pantry can have a lot to work with.”

The faculty ended up winning the Charity basketball game, although the student team made it a close game. The total donation amount is not yet known, but will be counted soon.

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My experience:

I enjoyed this video assignment. It may be because this was my last semester here for undergraduate school and have become increasingly comfortable with how to complete these assignments, but I feel as though this assignment went very smooth.

Although the peace march got cancelled, my plans for the video worked out very well. In place of the march, there was a snack and conversation event that I attended, and luckily talked to one of the student committee members at that event (Malcolm). He was very interested in helping with the assignment, so he sent me his availability for an interview in the upcoming week.

This is the first assignment I have been able to do where I feel like I actually used the equipment correctly. I have been trying to figure out how to use mics for so long, but this time finally worked. The manual settings on the camera I checked out from the department were interesting, but I still could fix them no problem.

I was able to go to a little of three of the five events of the week, with that shown through b-roll you can see in the above video. I used a tripod for a lot, but also handheld for some of those shots. I lacked a little in the detail shots area, but feel as though I had a good variety with the finished piece.

My favorite thing I did with this assignment was probably having the background noise as the jazz performance from the showcase on Thursday night. I recorded long enough to cover the whole video, so there’s meaning to it instead of just being a background noise.