When freshman Brooke Hollander, a television-radio major, was filming to enter the Golden Doorknob film competition, she said she wished she knew more people in the theater department.

“We had real problems casting people that made the characters believable,” she said. “We could have had actors that actually knew what they were doing, rather than just random people that hadn’t studied acting.”

 

IC Net, a new student-run organization, aims to eliminate barriers that exist between all of the schools on Ithaca College’s campus. Senior Eddie Lemonier, the group’s founder, said he believes IC Net will make life easier for students like Hollander, through a Web database that gives students a convenient and direct way to contact each other.

 

“[It’s] kind of like an Ithaca College Craigslist,” he said.

Lemonier said the database would be created by the end of fall 2009.

Lemonier said he noticed there were many resources across the college that students didn’t know about or have access to. He said students across the college can easily collaborate on creative projects, such as films. For example, a student working on a film with a budget could hire a finance student, in addition to theater and music students.

Lemonier said while the project was conceived before President Tom Rochon presented his strategic vision, which emphasized a more integrative curriculum, members of the group have been in contact with Rochon and Diane Lynch, dean of the Roy H. Park School of Communications, about how the two are related.

“IC Net is trying to work with [them] to create a coalition between students and the administration,” he said.

Lemonier said that, in a meeting Tuesday, he, Rochon and Lynch discussed future events and ways to engage students.

“[Rochon] was able to express how pleased he was that students were indulging in these ideas even before he got here,” he said. “It’s a very cool relationship that’s being created.”

The original proposal, Park Fusion, sought to integrate two departments within the Roy H. Park School of Communication — the department of strategic communication and cinema, photography and visual arts. Lemonier said the two departments had a lot of overlap and could work to mutually benefit each other.

“This synergistic relation existed between these two departments,” he said. “[Then] I realized that this type of relationship existed between all departments on campus.”

IC Net will host its next event, a forum for students to discuss integrative learning, at 12:10 p.m. today in the 1st floor atrium of the Peggy R. Williams Center.

Sophomore Nykaulys Cruz said she thinks IC Net will make creative projects more efficient by encouraging work with other students with specific skills.

“No one becomes a Parkie because they like math,” she said. “It would be great to be able to get people who have skills you don’t have to help you, and they would get experience out of it too.”

Lemonier said he hopes integrative learning would eventually become student-driven.

“Each school can kind of benefit from one another,” Lemonier said. “I would just hope that faculty and administration would just be able to oversee everything and let it be more of a student-run kind of thing.”

IC Net held its first event, a campus-wide showcase of student work titled “Show Me Whatcha Got!” last Thursday in the Park Auditorium. The event invited students from any school, major and year to submit any type of work. Lemonier said the Park Auditorium was nearly full and the event was informal. Students screened films, played music and showcased photography and art, while members of IC Net gave an informal presentation.

Lemonier said the goal was to get as many people involved as possible.

“What we’re trying to do with this is exemplify how students all over campus are doing creative and academic things that aren’t so much related to what they’re studying,” he said.

Sophomore art history major Jordan Mitek, who entered five of his Jackson Pollock-inspired artworks into the showcase, said he thought the college needed a program like IC Net.

“IC Net would make it a lot easier for people to get together and just do something,” he said. “I think Ithaca needs to do more of that.”

 

For more information, e-mail IC Net at icnetstudentorg@gmail.com.