plackamas Print______________
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
_______________________________
Feature D
tudent crowned Miss Clackamas
ca Burris has
\dy won locally.
she will compete
diss Oregon in
ide
gan Koler
lr in Chief
s’s beauty and she’s brains, and
tyle and she’s grace - she’s Miss
mas Count\!
Miss Clack a n ias County pageant, a
anch of the national Miss America
was won this year by Clackamas
unity College’s very own graduate,
!cBurris.
been an interesting adventure,”
said. “I wouldn’t have said I was
nt person. I am kind of more anti-
- got into this because, when I
de, I was always watching Miss
2 a with my mom and grandma,”
lained^ “so it’s always been like a
iadition.”
prospects c business major, who
:o attend University of Oregon,
o consider pageant competition as
is means to fund her studies,
actually Must wanted to give it a
he said, j‘I was like, ‘You know ...
ing; I can do what I want. I’ll just
is a try’.”
ig 6-foot-2-inches didn’t hurt,
M
:ause I lam so tall, I’ve always
raid of fascinated by modeling, but
i wanted Ito get into it as a career,”
id.
stereotypes and atmosphere of the
ig world and pageant competition
concern as Burris began to explore
S America organization.
:!? first thing I did was get a hold of
el director here for Clackamas, and
disked her a lot of questions,” she
asked, ‘Is this a shallow pageant?
ike what I see on TV with Donald
and Miss USA?’”
id Miss USA pageant is a beauty
J owned toy Donald Trump - who
vns the Miss Universe Pageant
wards the winner with a modeling
;re are more catty girls, I would
say, in that (pageant),” Burris said. “They
don’t have a talent portion, and I don’t
believe they have as much stress on com
munity service and more philanthropic
things.”
Burris maintains that although Miss
America seems like a beauty pageant, it is
more of a community service award.
“You have to do this big interview,”
she said. “It’s 10 minutes long in front of
a panel of six judges that are all business
owners in the Clackamas area. They bom
bard you with questions about the politics
and
the
election
right now,
as well as
your plat
form.”
Each
contestant
is required
to have a
project or
platform,
usually a
Jessica Burris
charity,
Miss Clackamas
to accom
pany his
or
her
campaign.
Burris’ platform is music education.
“They want to know what you do, and
what I do is teach children music lessons,”
she said. “Because I’m a teacher, I am
passionate about seeing my students suc
ceed in life, and created my platform on
after-school music education so I could
help inspire more kids in Clackamas
County to pursue music as a hobby or
career.”
“After
my
friend’s death this
winter, playing on the bass
and piano helped me sort
out my own emotions as
I dealt with my loss,” she
added. “I know having mu
sical skills would have giv
en him an outlet for his
emotional
frustrations,
rather than turning to sui
cide.”
Burris believes that
the overall message of the
competition is community
service and awareness.
However, it always has
and probably will have, in
the foreseeable future, an
“I wouldn ’t
have said I
was a pageant
person. I
am kind of
more
anti-pageant.”
apparently superficial
side.
“Of course, because
we’re women, they’re
like, ‘OK, well, you look
gorgeous, so let’s have
you in a swimsuit and
make you a sex sym
bol,”’ she said. “That’s
how they’re market
ing it, but they’re try
ing to get away from
that and more into ‘real
people.’”
“Some of the girls
who win, they’re not
stick-thin,” she added.
“But they reward you
on how fit you are,
like any sport.”
They also reward
women
for
their
involvement in a
wide array of activi
ties, which the local
Clackamas director,
or coach, of the Miss
America
pageant,
Linda Brume, thinks
is Burris’ best feature.
“All my girls are great,
but Jessy is just really well-rounded,”
Brume said. “She is very smart and very
ambitious with her career and education
goals, but she also has plenty of interests
outside of school.”
“She is what the Miss America system
is all about,” Brume added.
Burris will compete for the Miss Oregon
title June 23 through 28 at the Seaside
Convention Center, in Seaside, Ore.
Anyone interested in compet
ing or sponsoring Burris can
e-mail her at
jessy.burris@yahoo.com or
Brume at tapdancer60@yahoo.
com. For more information
about the Miss Clackamas
pageant, visit MySpace.com/
missclackamaspageant.
_________________________________
Contributed
TOP: Student Jessica Burris talks with oth
ers in Rook Hall.
ABOVE: Burris sits with her piano students.
'deo games get the spotlight, proving they are more than just a game
glish ¿¡ass offers
lifferent look at the
ieo-gdme world
iss Sheppard
Print
® easy ft) be skeptical about
idea of ing games, espe-
' video
es, as a medium
, but English
r Dodge has found a
________ ive way to do so in
ass Games and Literature.
According to Dodge, toe
rican culture is a society in
ph “we have ancient texts that
also in the same backpacks
ame Boys and PSPs and cell
es.”
What this course tries to do is
take some of those things out
dually ask big questions about
l!ter than go, ‘Oh, it’s fun,’” he
ined BT
ne specific piece his students
squired to read and analyze is
mo” by Dante Alighieri.
t sa^ on the first level,
of weird to talk about Dante’s
-mo,’ this grand poem in the
______
J
western canon of literature, and
then have someone associate that to
‘Devil May Cry,”’ he said. “That’s a
discussion point that can only go so
far as far as that particular game is
concerned but it does offer a larger
cultural critique to study.”
Dodge chose “The Inferno” spe
cifically because it is, among other
reasons, an easier piece to break
down into sections than some of the
similar works used, such as John
Milton’s “Paradise Lost”
“I chose ‘The Inferno' because,
well, one, it’s really sexy,” lie said.
‘It’s so visual, too. It’s really incred
ible what Dante is able to do with
language.”
Another, more contemporary,
writer being observed in the course
is H.P. Lovecraft
“A lot of the way people are dis
covering his work is through gam
ing,” Dodge said “That’s how I
discovered it when I was in college.
I’d never read a lick of Lovecraft,
and there were some friends of mine
who were in the dorm (and) were
playing this game, and exposure to
him, for me, came through gam
ing”
Dodge plans to hold a tabletop
session from the “Call of Cthulu”
series later in the course.
But what do H. P. Lovecraft,
Dante Alleghiri and the video game
“Devil May Cry” have in com
mon?
They are all, essentially, epic
poems, Dodge said
During toe course of a single
Tuesday, Dodge spoke heavily on
the similarities between modem
games and toe traditional epic poem
of ancient Greece.
“That’s how it gets its literary
traction,” he said “The feet that I
can teach it in my department it’s
gonna have to have those things
toft.”
With that thought in mind, how
can games-particularly RPGs- not
be compared to such classics as
Homer’s “The Odyssey”?
The class not only draws on the
epic poem in its original form, but
also examines its evolution from
an oral tradition to its re-imaging
as a novel and finally, as a game in
today’s world
Of course, a certain level of chal
lenge is involved in managing a
classroom fiill of gaming enthusi
asts.
‘1 thought we’d be able to play
more games in class,” admitted stu
dent Jamie Kemp, “but otherwise,
toe class is really interesting.”
Dodge is well
aware of toe feet
that, of the indi
viduals enrolled in
the course, “almost
everyone ... has
a favorite video
game.”
“You can hear it
in the discussion,”
he said “Part of toe
trick of teaching
the class is trying to
steer toe conversa
tion off of toe rails
of video-gaming,
because it’s such an
immediate and pow
erfill medium.”
Games
and
Literature is only
offered spring term,
but as of last spring,
it is now a perma
nent class.
“As long as I’m
here, and as long
as it meets enroll
ment, I plan to teach
it every spring,”
Dodge said
John Shufelt Clackamas Print
Games and Literature Instructor
Trevor Dodge teaches a class through
video games and classics such as “The
Odyssey” and Dante’s “The Inferno.”