Miami Student

Issue date: 11/9/07 Section: Campus

Students who participated in the Over-the-Rhine Residency Program created digital posters with pictures of the Cincinnati neighborhood.

There are Miami University students currently living in an area that the media portrays as a war zone.

The program, called the Over-the-Rhine Residency Program, has created an exhibit to portray these experiences through previous and current students.

The exhibit is located in the Cage Gallery (or "the cage"), which opened at 4 p.m. Wednesday and will remain open through Nov. 30 in Alumni Hall, and is far from typical.

"It's a journey of pieces from each person's experience and what he or she got out of it," explained senior Brittany Drapac, a previous residency participant.

Nothing hangs on the walls and there are no paintings displayed. Instead, boards with graffiti on one side and posters showcasing each student's experience on the other side hang from the ceiling.

The residency program is in its second year and 23 students have participated. They live in apartments near Washington Park in Cincinnati and take classes taught by Miami professors.

Architecture and interior design professor Tom Dutton, director of the program, emphasized that although the classes are important, it is the experience and the change within the students that is emphasized in the program, as well as the showcase.

"The exhibit is about the transformation in the students, how their value systems were tested and how they dealt with those questions," Dutton said.

The digitally created posters contain pictures of the neighborhood and the participants, as well as journal entries and poems. The image created is drastically different than the picture the statistics and media reports create.

Over-the-Rhine has a population of little more than 7,500 with an average household income of less than $10,000.

From January to September 2007, Over-the-Rhine led Cincinnati neighborhoods in crime ratings according to the City of Cincinnati Police Department.

Dutton wanted the exhibit to showcase the changes the students experienced and how they questioned what they thought they knew about the area.

"I realized that news reports and other information about the neighborhood were either inaccurate altogether or exaggerated," the poster by senior Shawn Thomas reads.

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