2014 Elevator videos
Though technical difficulties made it impossible to screen these at Celebrating Periclean Scholars, here now are the three “elevator speech” videos from the ’15’s, ’16’s and ’17’s. Enjoy!
Celebrating Periclean Scholars Speech
Written and delivered by Catherine Palmer and Elaina Vermeulen, Class of 2015
This year has proven to be a year of great significance and progress for our class as it has dawned on us that every moment, every second counts. The inevitability of our time together coming to an end has spurred us forward with a tremendous intensity as we strive to make the most of our time that remains.
Our partnerships will not come to an end when we cross the stage at graduation. Though we will not have the privilege to visit our partners in Haiti due to travel restrictions, we are excited to play an integral part in supporting our Haitian partner Restavek Freedom Foundation’s Port Salud transition home for girls rescued from Restavek. Our goal is to raise sufficient funding to start a $100,000 fellowship in order to financially support one girl’s place in the transition home every year. A partnership with Hal Walker’s sport and event management class has promised us a Casino Night in November, a fundraising event sure to bring us closer to our goal.
We have established a program with our local partner, Alamance For Freedom, that will allow one student per semester to intern for this coalition, learning and disseminating information about trafficking in Alamance County, developing resources for survivors, and working hand-in-hand with law enforcement for the sake of prevention and intervention. A member of our cohort, Amy McCurdy, has pioneered this position, creating a precedent for the many interns to come.
We are so grateful for those of you whom have supported our Stand Up for Freedom week. Many hours of work have been poured into this week dedicated to raising awareness and facilitating discussion about this woefully forgotten issue. We feel strongly that all members of the Elon community should know about the prolific and dangerous practice of human trafficking, especially acknowledging how it exists at a shockingly grand scale in our university’s own backyard. We are honored to have four representatives from our Haitian partnership, Restavek Freedom Foundation. Please help us recognize Christine, Joan, Rosaline, and Adeline. They have brought a fantastic interactive exhibit which presents a first-person view of restavek, set up in the Sacred Space of Numen Lumen. We highly encourage you to go visit the exhibit, to experience first-hand the trials of child slavery. It will be up through tomorrow.
For the past three years, Elaina and I have been fortunate enough to deliver the speech for the Class of 2015 at Celebrate Periclean, and each year we have wrestled with the question “What does it mean to be a Periclean Scholar?” We have tried, again and again, year after year, to define what this challenging yet rewarding experience means. After all this time, we think we may finally have encountered the true essence of this program, and what is has added to our time here at Elon. To be a Periclean Scholar means to care; to care deeply about the world around us. To care so much so that it spurs us to cross oceans, deconstruct our own beliefs, and lend our hearts to the heroes who raise their voices against injustice every day. To dedicate our undergraduate research to understanding trafficking, to work with anti-trafficking organizations in Alamance County, and to scrutinize the roles we play in promoting social justice. In May, we will be ready to face the world as more informed, compassionate, curious, and humble citizens of the world, so much of which we owe to our privilege of being Periclean Scholars.
Follow