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Media Contact: Maddy Elledge
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Young Harris College to Host Re-Visioning Justice Presentation
YOUNG HARRIS, Ga. – The Young Harris College Honors Program and Center for Appalachian Studies and Community Engagement will sponsor a re-visioning justice lecture on Wednesday, Oct. 19, at 5:30 p.m. in the Wilson Lecture Hall of the Goolsby Center on the YHC campus. This event is free and open to the public.
Senior history major Jessica Kirby, of Martin, Ga., will present “Race Relations in America: Then and Now.” This presentation is part of her senior capstone project.
“Re-visioning justice is important because it’s been over a century since slavery existed in this country,” said Kirby. “It has been almost six decades since the Civil Rights Movement, and yet racial biases still intervene in our ‘justice’ system.”
YHC presented a “Re-Visioning Justice” series during the 2015-2016 academic year that was designed to foster open communication about difficult racial and social justice issues. Kirby credits this series and various courses she has been enrolled in with sparking her passion for this topic.
“Jessica’s research on justice and equality in America does more than simply compare the race relations from different periods of our history,” said Interim Director of Center for Appalachian Studies and Community Engagement, YHC SOLE Program Director and Instructor of Appalachian Studies Dr. Bethann Bowman. “It seeks to expand and clear our vision of what is and asks us to embrace justice as a social responsibility.”
“Re-visioning justice is not to say that all people in prisons or under probational circumstances are innocent,” explained Kirby. “But rather that we need to recognize that racism stills plays a prevalent part in our society, and in order to fix it, we must first make ourselves aware of it.”
Kirby has spent the last year researching this topic. “I hoped by choosing this as my capstone that I could make people more aware of the social justice issues we face today, and how we must acknowledge them in order to restore the society.”
About Young Harris College
Young Harris College is a private, baccalaureate degree-granting college located in the beautiful mountains of North Georgia. Founded in 1886 and historically affiliated with The United Methodist Church, Young Harris College educates, inspires and empowers students through the highest quality liberal arts education. The College currently has more than 1,100 students across five divisions—Education, Fine Arts, Humanities, Mathematics and Science, and Social and Behavioral Sciences. The historic campus in Young Harris, Ga., has completed major campus improvements to accommodate the College’s growth. Recent LEED-certified campus improvements include the 121,000-square-foot Rollins Campus Center, new residence facilities, and a 57,000-square-foot recreation and fitness center. The College is an active member of NCAA Division II and remains a fierce competitor in the prestigious Peach Belt Conference. YHC is among fewer than 300 colleges and universities nationwide named to the 2016-2017 list of Colleges of Distinction and is listed as a “Best National Liberal Arts College” by U.S. News & World Report. For more information, visit yhc.edu.
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