• AFFORDABILITY OF HIGHER EDUCATION
• COLUMBIA’S COMMITMENT TO AFFORDABILITY
• ART, EDUCATION AND ECONOMIC RENEWAL
• HELPING DISCOVER VOICES
Voices
Presentation To Visionblue
Educational Conference For Urban Filmmakers
October, 2003
Thank you, for the opportunity to speak with you tonight. I am Warrick Carter, president of Columbia College Chicago and I’m here to talk to you about voice, values and vision.
For those of you who may not be familiar with Columbia College, here are some relevant facts about the college. We are the largest visual, performing and media arts college in the nation. We have the largest film program in the world. We are the most diverse private college in Illinois. More than 35 percent of our students are people of color. We are the largest educator of African American filmmakers in the country. In fact, there are nearly as many African Americans studying film at Columbia College than in other film programs in the country combined.
We were the first college specializing in the arts and media to open our doors to minorities and people of lower income. We maintain an open access policy because we believe that artistic and creative expression is not necessarily reflected in standardized test scores or in high grade point averages. We believe that students flourish in a diverse environment where opportunities are afforded. We think our approach reflects what is inherently right about education in a democratic society.
Our alumni include people like George Tillman and Bob Teitel, the producing/directing team that made Men of Honor and Barbershop I and II. More than 30 Columbia students served as interns on Barbershop II that was filmed right here in Chicago. Barbershop II will be premiered in Chicago in February, and Tillman and Teitel will use the premiere to help raise money to support Columbia's Open Doors Scholarship initiative. Open Doors provides opportunities for emerging artists and communicators from the Chicago Public School system to attend Columbia College.
One of the first film shorts to be screened tonight, "Northern Lights," was produced by Columbia College students Dwayne Thomas (producer) and John Bosher and Michael Oberholtzer (directors).
Columbia College helps students find their voices. Our mission is to educate students who will author the culture of their times. Students at Columbia learn to speak through film and video, television, radio, music and theater, poetry and fiction, the visual arts and more. Right now, film is the most important communication vehicle of this generation, outside of Hip Hop,
We believe that our job is not just to train students for meaningful jobs; we believe we must also educate students to assume significant roles in society. As a school specializing in the arts and communications, we want our students to engage society. We believe that civic engagement is not an option. It is an obligation. With voice comes responsibility. Authors of our culture help to shape the public's perception of events and the world around them. Authors help to foster cultural understanding and change. Authors of our culture give voice to the hopes, dreams, aspirations and collective experiences of our community. As filmmakers, you have an opportunity and an obligation to contribute to the commonweal. You your voice as an artist and communicator to say something about the world we live in today. Say something, about Iraq, the Middle East and our dependence on foreign oil. Say something about Africa and the ravages of AIDS and colonialism on the homelands of our ancestors.
But above all else, say something about what is going on in our own backyards. Talk about rising unemployment, racism, sexism, black on black violence, the disproportionate number of our brothers and sisters in prison and on death row. Unless you are willing to speak up, there can be no solutions.
I’d like to close tonight with an old African proverb some of you may be familiar with. It is the story of the man who tells his son a bedtime story about the lion. The boy asks his father if the lion is the king of the jungle. The father tells his boy that the lion is king.
The boy asks the father if the lion is the strongest animal in the jungle. The father tells the son the lion is the strongest.
The boy asks his father, if the lion is the most powerful, why does man always win the fight with the lion. "My son," says the father, "man will always beat the lion until the lion learns how to write."
