Ball Starts Continued Conversation GroupPike Township resident Cindy Ball believes community conversation is essential to discuss local, national and international events. As of February 19, Ball officially kicked off her group called Mosaic: An International Conversation Café Community. She said she modeled her group from other World café processes. These cafes are located around the world with the purpose to create sustainable dialogue. Ball has a passion for international events. She has been to Africa several times to volunteer with children whom have lost their parents to aids. Issues like AIDS in Africa need more than just sound bites of dialogue. She wanted local, national and international concerns to have a sustained conversation within the community in hopes to bring awareness and change. Anyone is invited to drop in for these conversations at various places. Ball is partnering with businesses, restaurants to serve as a host site for these conversations. It also allows diverse people to explore different authentic ethnic food while coming together to share dialogue in a non-debate manner. “Debates become too emotion.” Ball is also involved with the Lafayette Square Area Coalition that has a mission to revitalize the Lafayette Square Area. LSAC also celebrates the LSA multi-cultural population. She said her conversation café is not a direct offshoot from the LSAC, but she has gathered support from the group. Ball, a teacher and youth development professional, hosted a forum February 22 to discuss Indianapolis Public School’s proposal of a dress code. Ball believed the issue needs more community dialogue and the directive should not be a top down chain of command. Ball contends the dress code is a peripheral issue that will only encourage the rebels to drop out, defeating the purpose of the instituting a dress code. “Will the dress code inspire children to learn? I am concerned about the power struggle between the students and the administration,” she said. Hope Artis contended that a dress code is not beating down the student’s individualism. “Students need to learn that is part of the process if they want to graduate. It is called life’s lesson,” she said. Artis admitted she was once a rebel with a blue hair mohawk hair cut, but she only displayed that during after school hours. All teenagers have power struggles if it is not with the dress code it will be with something else. She called it “Hope Time” but then she needed to focus. It is about assimilating and belonging. Students will still be able to express their individualism. “Kids need to know they cannot show up to job interviews in sweats, jeans and tennis shoes. We need to start younger.” Marcia Ross thinks it is a socio-economic problem and the school is carrying the burden of parenting. Ross did not think a dress code was a bad idea. “We all need to conform,” she said. She explained a dichotomy of thought exists in our society. “We have a society that supports individualism but at the same time many individuals are ostracized for their individualism,” One participant, who did not want to be identified, said it is global world. Many people make their money from the Internet, so dress code is not a problem. He thinks the dress code is form of control. Instead of instituting a dress code, IPS should be offering a democratic school system. ‘They are trying to mold them like the army and suppress their individualism.” Ball thinks the paradigm is shifting to create “worker bees” to work for someone else instead of being builders of the community that are entrepreneurs and free thinkers. Ball disenchanted that community is complacent about the dress code issue because she does not think this will solve IPS’ poor graduation rate. She decided to take this dialogue into the IPS community by raising the dialogue among neighborhood associations. “We need to ask the question what is the dress code really for?” she said. . |
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