A day of watching cartoons, sitting around in your pajamas and relaxing. That characterizes the day’s celebration outside of Phillips Academy, where Martin Luther King Jr. Day is often met with apathy and detachment. Here at PA we have the opportunity to take a more active approach and revive Dr. King’s values and combat prejudice in our world. This Monday, Jan. 16 the community will partake in workshops and community service activities celebrating the life of Martin Luther King Jr. The day begins at 9:30 AM with an All-School Meeting. Professor in Economics at Harvard University, Dr. Roland Fryer, is the keynote speaker. This year, unlike previous years, the entire student body will only meet once. For the rest of the day, each class divides into workshops and community service projects to enrich their MLK Day experiences. Juniors attend a workshop in Kemper Auditorium that outlines the historical aspects of King’s life. Lowers watch a movie, “Crash,” that presents issues of race and class in everyday life, and will then discuss the film with their Life-Issues classes. “Crash,” released in 2004 at the Toronto Film Festival, debuted to rave reviews by notable critics, including Oprah Winfrey. Uppers and Seniors, on the other hand, choose one of sixteen different workshops to participate in. Themes include poetry, art, spiritual music, games, morality and gender issues and dance. One workshop, “Portraiture, Self-Portraiture, and Identity,” discusses the effect of power images on American art over the past two hundred years. Using the Addison Gallery, this project compares nineteenth-century African American art and contemporary paintings by Edward Elson and Beverly Mclver to analyze several perspectives on racial and familial issues. Another workshop, “Moving Beyond the Divide,” considers the contrast between contemporary Hip-Hop and the older Ballet dancing in American culture. This activity asks participants to move beyond common stereotypes of pop culture, professional hip-hop and ballet dancers. Student coordinator, Renee Amirault, said that the workshop should “show them [participants] that dance comes from the same place no matter what style you are doing.” A third project, “Economic Justice: The Scramble for Wealth and Power,” investigates the distribution of wealth in the world in a hands-on matter. Participants will be asked to distribute one hundred pennies, signifying the wealth of the world, amongst them. This activity will encourage students to broach concepts of fairness, responsibility and basic necessities. In Graves there will be a workshop on piano music written by African-American women who influenced the beginning and end of King’s life. Performances by Andover students will illuminate The Black Arts of King’s time. This project will end with students’ creations of spiritual lyrics to an existing piano piece. In addition to workshops, there are also several community service projects during the day. Uppers and Seniors can participate in these service activities. A few of these projects include the Lawrence Boys’ and Girls’ Club, the MLK Day Kids’ Fair, Corpus Christi (an AIDS hospice), Neighbors in Need (a food pantry), the Sabre Foundation (an international book donation) and the Sutton Hill Nursing Home. The aim of these activities is to carry on the work of Dr. King, eliminating prejudice and aiding the less fortunate. Andover’s unique MLK Day schedule allows the community to face difficult issues of race and civil rights. While the rest of the world takes a day off, PA will be carrying on the dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., one student at a time.
