OrangeBand tackles local, national topics

Initiative begins action weeks with educational forums to invovle students, community

The OrangeBand Initiative will hold its semiannual educational forums beginning this week.

Since its founding a year ago, OrangeBand has been encouraging nonpartisan, open dialogue about political, social, and economic issues, senior Kai Degner said.

This week marks the start of OrangeBand's action weeks. As part of the two action weeks, OrangeBand, along with other clubs, organizations and faculty, will be sponsoring educational forums on local, national and international topics.

The local topic this year focuses on the immigrant, migrant and refugee population in Harrisonburg.

"The idea to have this as our local topic comes from the statistic that there are over 40 registered languages spoken at Harrisonburg High School," said senior Bonnie Saxon, an OrangeBand staff member who is organizing forums for this topic.

OrangeBand also chose this topic because it wanted people to know in what kind of community JMU students live, Saxon said. It wants to help students understand who is coming to Harrisonburg, from where, why and what are they doing.

As part of its movement to engage the community, OrangeBand also is spreading to other campuses, such as Eastern Mennonite University, which will host JMU students and hold forums on the local topic.

The national topic forums will focus on the voting process in America. Professors will explain the Electoral College, statistics from past elections and why it is important to vote.

According to Degner, this also will help OrangeBand reach its goal to have 80 percent of all eligible JMU students vote in November's election, a challenge OrangeBand has taken to help achieve its purpose of engaging the community.

The international topic will discuss the problem of AIDS and famine in Africa.

"The focus will be on how to combat the AIDS epidemic and what we can do to help," said senior Megan Dunphy, who is helping organize forums on this topic.

These educational forums will be held March 22 through April 2 around campus.

According to www.orangeband.org, OrangeBand's purpose is to provide a nonpartisan "atmosphere of learning from diverse perspectives by providing an unbounded space for nonargumentative, constructive conversations about meaningful contemporary issues."

OrangeBand also holds discussion groups every Tuesday at 12:30 p.m. and Wednesday at 8 p.m. at Taylor Down Under, and has a radio show every Monday from 10 a.m. to noon on WXJM.