Fashions, feelings and fitting in

By Judy Taylor Cramer
Managing editor, Florida State Times

"But Mom, everyone is wearing it."
Fashions may change, but the lament remains the same. Just look around the campus of any middle or high school, and you'll see "the uniform." No, not the white shirts and plaid skirts a school board might mandate, but the "cool" clothes everyone wears.
Elaine Shook, who recently received her Ph.D. in textiles and consumer sciences from FSU, first became fascinated with fashion when she learned to sew in 4-H club.
After several years of teaching home economics in high school, Shook is back in 4-H, but now she's a 4-H leader for the Leon County Cooperative Extension Service. For her doctoral dissertation, Shook surveyed 22 sixth-grade classes in Leon County's nine public middle schools to discover if being deprived of "cool" clothes had any effect on students' self-esteem and social participation.
Sixth-graders were chosen, she says, because that's the age when they leave a more nurturing elementary-school setting for a more structured middle-school setting.
"Clothing has a definite impact on youngsters - how they feel about themselves and how others feel about them," she says. Parents, teachers and school administrators must avoid being "clueless" about the importance of clothing styles to the early adolescent who is trying to fit in.
Shook found that a young teen who feels "clothing deprivation" - that is, the inability to purchase clothes like those that other students wear - has lower self-esteem. And that translates into less participation in school activities.
Gender, race or socioeconomic status do not appear to be factors in the sixth-graders' feelings, she says.
"I think parents, teachers and school administrators should become more sensitive to how clothing affects a young person's behavior," Shook says.
"People look at kids and what they're wearing, and they label them. People can decide whether you're intelligent or what your morals are based on what you wear. Sometimes that reflects back and affects self-esteem."
While Shook doesn't advocate letting a student dress any way she pleases, she says buying just one "in" item could go a long way toward making a teen feel good about herself.
Understanding the effect of clothing on behavior also can help school administrators make decisions on written dress codes or even uniforms.
"The arguments for uniforms are based on issues of self-esteem, school climate and safety," Shook says. "If everyone were dressed alike, maybe kids could focus on the real meaning of school. It wouldn't be just a fashion show."

Sea urchins spawn
theory of evolving sexes

By Judy Taylor Cramer
Managing editor, Florida State Times

Those underwater porcupines, sea urchins, may hold the answers to prickly questions about the evolution of the sexes, says a Florida State biologist.
Using both laboratory experiments and field work, Don R. Levitan, assistant professor of biological science at FSU, found that female sea urchins may have evolved larger eggs to increase the chances of the eggs being fertilized by sperm dispersed by ocean currents.
Levitan's findings, recently published in the weekly scientific journal Nature, run contrary to early theories on the evolution of gender, which held that because sperm far outnumber eggs, males must compete for fertilization. Recent evidence, however, suggests that sperm are often dispersed to the point that many eggs go unfertilized in free-spawning species.
Levitan has been studying sea urchins' free-spawning reproduction - releasing eggs and sperm into the water - because it mirrors the mating strategy used by animals living millions of years before differences arose between males and females.
Working in the waters off British Columbia in Canada where the sea urchins are unusually large and easier to see and study, Levitan splits egg and sperm from a single male and a single female urchin into two samples. One is investigated in the laboratory and one is released into the ocean.
The sperm are released first, and then the eggs are released into the sperm "cloud," he said. After two minutes, the free-drifting eggs are recaptured with "an underwater vacuum cleaner" and inspected for evidence of fertilization.
Egg size was a major factor in fertilization success, Levitan found. Female urchins produce eggs of different sizes, with the larger eggs having a higher rate of fertilization.
"What is surprising is that gamete traits like egg size can influence rates of fertilization not only in the lab but also in the rough seas found off the Pacific Northwest," Levitan said. "This means that female traits, typically overlooked, must be considered in the evolution of fertilization strategies."


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A showcase for drama and dance

Gil Lazier, dean of the FSU School of Theatre, announces a new collaboration among FSU, the Sarasota Ballet of Florida and the Asolo Theatre Company at a news conference in Sarasota. Under the agreement, the performing arts center - owned by FSU and home to Asolo Theatre Company and FSU/Asolo Conservatory for Actor Training - will now become the permanent home for the ballet company. Jeff Robison, president of the FSU Foundation, also announced a $1.7 million gift from the Sarasota Ballet to be used for FSU student scholarships, ballet space in the center, and toward the Asolo Theatre Company debt.

Opera's "search for love"


"And they lived happily ever after."
In fairy tales, the search for love always has a happy ending.
The Florida State Opera begins its "Search for Love" season with the fairy tale "Cinderella" and ends with the happy "Albert Herring." In between, the School of Music's opera company will stage the classic "Orpheus and Eurydice."
The 1996-97 season opens Friday, Nov. 15, in Ruby Diamond Auditorium with a production of Jules Massenet's "Cinderella." Performed in French with English translation, the retelling of the classic tale will feature an all-student cast directed by Michael McConnell and conducted by Douglas Fisher. Set design will be by John Claassen, and lighting design by Cynthia Stillings. The opera will run through Nov. 23.
Gluck's "Orpheus and Eurydice," performed in Italian with English translation, is a retelling of the classic Orpheus myth. It will be staged Feb. 26-March 2 in Opperman Music Hall.
Benjamin Britten's English-language comedy, "Albert Herring," was inspired by a Guy de Maupassant short story. It will be performed May 29-June 1 in Opperman Music Hall.
Season subscriptions, family specials and tickets for individual performances go on sale Sept. 10. To order tickets, or for more information, call the Fine Arts Box Office at (904) 644-6500.


Hoffman to head
Campus Community Campaign

By Carl Voelcker
FSU Foundation

Kitty Hoffman, an FSU benefactor and former faculty member, is leading the Campus Community Phase of the Investment in Learning Capital Campaign for Florida State University.
"The Campus Community Campaign is an opportunity for the faculty and staff to not only show their support of FSU and its fund-raising efforts, but also a chance to do something meaningful for their own departments," said Hoffman, a retired professor emeritus of chemistry.
The Campus Community Campaign Council, composed of representatives of academic, administrative and support divisions of FSU, has been meeting since March to chart the course of the campaign.
"Two major areas of concern have been determined, the Strozier Library and a scholarship fund for the children of FSU employees," Hoffman said.
Individual gifts may be earmaked for specific departments or areas, she said.
"Our goal is 100 percent participation," said Hoffman. "The size of a gift is not important. What is important is that we unite in this effort to show our support of FSU and our commitment to the future of excellence at Florida State."
Hoffman, a 1936 graduate of The Florida State College for Women, was on the chemistry faculty from 1940 until her retirement in 1984. During that time she was associate chairman of the department of chemistry and Dean of Women. In 1981, she became the first woman to be elected president of the Faculty Senate.
She and her husband Harold Hoffman, retired state assistant agriculture commissioner, reside in Tallahassee. Their contributions to the Investment In Learning Capital Campaign include an endowed scholarship fund in chemistry.

Alumni Association elects new officers

New officers elected to the Florida State Alumni Association for 1996-97 are:
Chair:
Dr. C. David Smith ('76, PIMS), Jay, Fla., director, Jay Hospital Community Health Outreach Health Center.
Chair-elect:
Cynthia Tunnicliff ('67, Criminology, '71, Law), Tallahassee, member, Pennington Culpepper Moore Law Firm.
Executive vice president:
Hugo deBeaubien ('70, Business), Orlando, president, Drage, deBeaubien, Knight, Simmons, Romano & Neal law firm.
Secretary:
Sherry Quarello ('80, Business), Atlanta, financial consultant, Georgia Teachers Retirement System.
Treasurer:
Dr. Raymond Cottrell ('69, Chemistry), Orlando, partner, Internal Medical Specialists.

Retired librarian
catalogs search for her roots


By Jim Robison
Reprinted from The Orlando Sentinel

On May 6, 1993 - one year and a day after the death of her mother - Mary L. Jackson Fears' 13-year roots search revealed the document that told her what happened to her family after the death of Georgia planter John McCrary.
She had driven about a hour from her Daytona Beach home to the Mormon's Family History Center in Lake Mary.
In the microfilm records of Taylor County, Ga., she read the 1855-56 inventory records of McCrary's estate. The list includes "my kinfolks," the family of a slave named Luveser McCrary.
"Quickly, my eyes sprinted down the page, up and down the next page, raced up, down, 11 pages of vouchers, scanning through statements of amounts paid to county officials for various services, like taxes on the estate, travel expenses of the administrator and so on and on for various expenditures," Fears writes in her first book, Slave Ancestral Research: It's Something Else.
"Alas, page 191, a list of lots numbered 1-8, naming the Negro slaves. My eyes fell on 'No. 3 . . . Matilda, Ralid, Bucky & Missouri. I blurted out, 'I found my folks!'"
The pages also included the fates of Ned, Peter, Sal, Robert and Caroline, family names she had uncovered in her research in Florida, Georgia and Washington, D.C.
And she found No. 7, Old Visues, "valued at only $25 for a whole life of slavery."
Those old records also confirmed the sale of her slave family members. In the 1870 census for Taylor County, she found Simon and Matilda McCants. "They took the name of the last owner before freedom . . . At last, I was certain, I had indeed found my folks."
Separated by seven generations from her African ancestors, Fears had traced her family link from Luveser to freedom.
Fears, who retired after 30 years as a librarian in Volusia County school system, has just completed her second of two books on African-American ancestral research.
Slave Ancestral Research in Seven Steps Within the Jackson-Moore Family History and Genealogy is an exhaustive journal just published by Heritage Books Inc. as a companion to her 1995 book, It's Something Else.
The oldest daughter of Sylvester Jackson, who made his living on the dimes and nickels he took in tips as a waiter at Sanford's Mayfair resort hotel on Lake Monroe, Fears had little chance of going to college after her graduation from Crooms Academy.
She turned to her mentor, Joseph Nathaniel Crooms, whose parents were slaves on a Tallahassee area plantation. The founder of Crooms Academy had become a well-respected Florida educator.
"I asked him, 'Can you get me a scholarship anywhere?'" she recalled.
"Just on his word," she won a scholarship to Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach. With extra money her mother borrowed from friends, Fears became the first in her family to graduate from college.
She later earned her master's degree in Library and Information Science from Florida State University in 1974.
Her research training and freedom of retirement gave her the courage to undertake the massive task of tracing her family's heritage.
Both of her books are rich in details and copies of documents gleaned from years of study. She presents them in the order she discovered each nugget of information, creating a story within a story and sharing her excitement as she goes.


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