Educating Meredith on the Dangers of a Virtual World
By Stefanie Gregory, ’09

On October 15 at 5p.m., Kresge Auditorium was the place to be for any student or faculty member who had ever tried navigating the virtual world. As part of the Center for Women in Science & Mathematics speaker series co-sponsored by the Meredith College STARS Student Leadership Corps, Linda Criddle had a room full of people awaiting her.

Criddle has numerous accomplishments including her award winning book “Look Both Ways – Help Protect Your Family on the Internet” and helping to create laws and developing several patents for online safety. She has spent 30 years studying predators and has spent a considerable amount of time training the FBI, CIA, Interpol and other law enforcement departments on how to catch them. She also has over a hundred online profiles in which she finds all kinds of people living dangerously in the virtual realm and makes personal phone calls that have, quite possibly, been life-saving.

Criddle began by stressing the importance of knowing how to use the tools and services we have. “If you don’t know how criminals are going to use them then you do not know how to use the tools and services safely,” she said.

She then gave a simple math problem on how internet risks occur. Add the lack of knowledge about tools and services, carelessness in actions taken, unintentional or intentional exposure by others, flaws and gaps in technology, and holes in consumer protection standards and, all together, they equal deliberate criminal acts.

“Online crime is not something we can solve,” said Criddle. “There are two things that matter: What are you sharing? And who are you sharing it with? Raising awareness on internet safety is useless. There is no one-size fits all solution.”

The internet remains such a treacherous territory because “everything in our lives maintains a standard except the internet,” said Criddle. “You weren’t worried when you got dressed this morning that your clothes were going to give you cancer. You weren’t worried when you ate breakfast this morning that you were rolling the dice with salmonella.”

Criddle then began to throw some facts to the audience that would cause some to consider revamping their virtual lives.

“Adults and the 20 somethings expose themselves more than kids ever do,” said Criddle. “Up until four years ago you had a right to privacy. But we now live in a place where our privacy has been stripped. You have to understand that you are for sale and you have been sold.”

Criddle threw out the term “lockbumping,” and asked if anyone in the audience knew what it meant. When no one could say with certainty, she revealed that it meant “how to pick a lock,” and that if anyone entered the term into Google’s search engine, they could retrieve step-by-step instructions on how to do it, or better yet, watch a video.

“Over 200 million personal data records have been stolen since 2002,” Criddle informed the captivated audience. “The average person now spends 600 hours cleaning up their credit history after having it stolen.”

She then encouraged everyone in the room to enter their names into at least two search engines and find out everything that could about themselves so they’d know what anyone else could find out.

Criddle also explained that “those between the ages of 12 and 15 years become more at risk for sexual exploitation because they are at the age where they begin reaching out, and if they’re reaching, a predator will be within their reach.”

Perhaps the most eye-opening part of Criddle’s presentation came when she showed a couple of photos from a young girl’s Myspace profile. The girl was pictured on the steps in front of her house, and Criddle asked audience member to volunteer what they could deduce about the girl from the photo.

Once the audience pointed out several things, Criddle said, “Ok, now I’m going to tell you what I see, and what an online predator would see in this picture.” She proceeded to tell her listeners what this girl’s socio-economic status was, how and where to find her, and that she felt fairy confident the girl probably didn’t have that many friends which meant chances were high that she’d be easily susceptible to someone reaching out to her. She then revealed that a hidden house key would be underneath the worn-out flower pot on the front porch that looked like it had obviously been moved a lot.

“On average, it takes less than 9 minutes to find critical information on a potential victim,” said Criddle. “And it’s not just what you expose, it’s what your friends expose as well.”

An hour and a half after the crowd had gathered to hear Criddle speak, a well-informed audience walked out the doors of Kresge with a deeper understanding of a predator’s thought process so that, hopefully, they could all avoid being prey by making smarter virtual choices.

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Sustainability Spotlight: School of the Arts
By Melyssa Allen

Meredith’s “Sustaining Our Environment” campus theme has inspired several projects in the School of the Arts this semester. From theatre and dance performances to visual arts exhibitions, the School of the Arts is bringing attention to sustainability issues in a variety of ways.

Dean of the School of the Arts Rebecca Bailey believes the arts can transform facts about sustaining the earth into very immediate and personal experiences for the observer. 

“Through multi-sensory involvement, a deep, emotional connection can be formed that goes far beyond comprehension of data,” Bailey said. “Seeing a glacier in a photograph and understanding that, as massive as it appears, it is in danger of disappearing in a very few years has so much more impact than reading that ‘glaciers are shrinking.’”

Visual Arts
In visual arts, a featured exhibition this fall has been “The Thirsty Earth,” showcasing images taken by retired Professor of Biology Janice Swab during her travels around the world. The photographs illustrate how water's presence and absence affect plant life, animal life and the tender skin of the planet itself. The exhibition, which includes photographs from China, Antarctica, Africa and other locations, closes on November 16.

Another exhibition of Swab’s work is now on display in the Science and Mathematics Building until February.

"Snapshots in Time" includes photographs and artifacts that help the viewer gain insights into the relationship man has with the earth in countries around the world. It includes examples of how that relationship can be symbiotic and have relatively little impact on the ecosystem over time, such as in Belize, or effect rapid, overwhelming change, like the industrialization of China.

Additional exhibitions in the spring will also feature sustainability-inspired art. A show called "Darwin's Journey," will open on February 12, 2009, the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth. Evolution, and evolutionary dead ends created by climate change, conflict and other stressors, also relate to the theme.

School of the Arts Dean Becky Bailey and Departmental Assistant Karen Sampson are working with Janice Swab to create this exhibit, which will be based on original photographs, reproductions of archival material and artifacts collected by Swab in her efforts to retrace Darwin's journey.

“Visualizing Environmental Interaction” will be a multi-disciplinary exhibition by Meredith students and faculty will be on view February 1–April 6, 2009, in the Frankie G. Weems Art Gallery as well as across campus, inside and outside. In videos, sculptures, graphics, electronic media, and interactive and site specific installations, students will illustrate some of the complex sustainability issues. The exhibition will include independently created works and concepts developed by design teams.

“The works will address topics such as the volume of trash found on the Meredith campus, comparison of energy consumed in our living quarters with those in other parts of the world, spiritual influences of the environment as well as its decay and destruction, the energy economics of food and personal responsibility in contributing to the planet's well being among others,” Meredith Gallery Director Ann Roth said.

Students in Associate Professor of Art Lisa Pearce’s class are among those who are creating design proposals for the sustainability-themed exhibition. Her 3-D design students are using the three Rs—reduce, reuse and recycle as the focus of their concept.

Pearce’s students are also working on projects using a reed from Indonesia that is a fast-growing renewable resource.

“What’s really beautiful about these designs are that the reed is covered with paper with a lighting system inside to use ‘light’ as an element of design much like line and color are used,” Pearce said.

Dance
Meredith’s dance program is using the sustainability theme to help shape performances this semester. Carol Finley’s Dance Repertory is focusing on the topic in a way that is meant to raise student awareness of the issue. The piece is to be performed during the Meredith Dance Theatre concert, November 21-23.

Finley said the class “is exploring our impact as humans on the earth … we started by calculating our carbon footprints and have continued by creating material that physically explores strong versus light impact on the floor, in the air, on each other.”
Talani Torres asked students in her Dance in Society course to research an environmental issue for their group projects. They have completed poster presentations and are creating site specific dance art to represent issues such as deforestation, recycling and water conservation. The projects will culminate in dance performances presented across campus during final exam week.
Theatre
Theatre students have written a children’s play with an environmental theme, called "The Day the Trash Talked Back." It will be performed on Tuesday, Dec. 9, at 2 p.m. in the Studio Theatre. The show is free.

The faculty and staff of Meredith’s School of the Arts are using their artistic work to increase environmental awareness in the local community.

“By approaching linked environmental and societal issues through the arts, we hope to fully awaken the viewer to the crisis that our planet is facing,” Bailey said.

Editor’s Note: The Sustainability Spotlight will be a regular feature in “In A Nutshell.” Faculty and staff members who have sustainability efforts to share may email them to allenme@meredith.edu for consideration for a future issue.

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