Shepherdstown Story Archives - Page 2 of 13 - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Shepherd University Student Displays Appalachian Art In Traveling Showcase

ARTtrek is set to show paintings, sculptures and other works made by artists local to the region.

It will also be at the parking lot outside Shepherd University’s football stadium April 15 to 16, alongside other student visual art projects.

Senior Abby Bowman came up with the idea of showcasing different kinds of art in a mobile box trailer, dubbed ARTtrek, after talking to one of her professors. ARTtrek is set to show paintings, sculptures and other works made by her and other artists local to the region.

“It’s just all about connecting communities and connecting with our culture overall,” Bowman said. “The box trailer itself will trek through the mountains and connect Appalachian artists together.”

Bowman said she hopes to promote the state’s cultural heritage by introducing more contemporary artists to a wider audience.

“I think our region and our landscapes play a part in that as well, that we’re sheltered in a way from the outside world, which has kept it so rich and so meaningful to each of us,” she said.

The first exhibit on April 7 will showcase paintings of local Shepherdstown monument Shepherd’s Mill, alongside Bowman’s depictions of Appalachian landscapes in quilted sculptures. Works from Shepherd University’s Visual Arts Collection will also be exhibited the following week.

Eventually, Bowman would like to expand the trailer to accommodate emerging student artists across Appalachia.

“I just want it to be an opportunity for any Appalachian artists, whatever their concentration is,” she said. “It’s very hard to get into art galleries and get into shows. You have to pay all this money and it’s very hard especially when you’re a college student already struggling.”

Bowman said she’s trying to organize plans for the trailer to appear at festivals and events throughout the state. Its first appearance is scheduled in Shepherdstown on April 7 and 8 from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Shepherdstown’s Byrd Center Hosts Panel On Forever Chemical Regulation

These chemicals are called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, more commonly known as PFAS. Berkeley, Jefferson and Morgan counties are considered one of the PFAS “hot zones,” with unsafe levels found in 21 raw water supplies in these areas.

Advocates held a community forum in Shepherdstown Wednesday to discuss potential action to regulate harmful “forever chemicals.”

Statewide, PFAS chemicals have been found in 130 water supplies, with the state’s Department of Environmental Protection and Department of Health and Human Resources currently testing the state’s treated water systems as well.

Panelists, including West Virginia Rivers Coalition scientist Jenna Dodson, explained what that meant to concerned citizens.

“They’re in our waterways, it’s in our soil, it’s in our air because it also travels via air deposition,” Dodson said. “And so that’s why they’re so ubiquitous and again, localized contamination can occur.”

PFAS have been used to manufacture industrial products, like firefighting foam, as well as consumer products.

“Things that you would have around the household, like nonstick cookware and any water resistant outdoor jackets you might have, food packaging and popcorn bags and carpet and Scotchgard and all these different kinds of products,” Dodson said. “And so these products end up in landfills, many of them can have leachate that gets into the groundwater and percolates through the soil.”

Legislators introduced a bill in the state Senate Thursday that would see manufacturers self-report their usage of PFAS. It was sent to the Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee for discussion. A similar bill is set to be introduced in the House of Delegates.

Shepherd University Football Team Heads To Division II Semifinal Game

This weekend, Shepherd University’s loyal fans in the Eastern Panhandle will cheer on their football program when they play in the Division II semifinals with hopes for a national championship berth.

College football in West Virginia is usually associated with the West Virginia Mountaineers and Marshall Thundering Herd. But this weekend, Shepherd University’s loyal fans in the Eastern Panhandle will cheer on their football program when they play in the Division II semifinals with hopes for a national championship berth.

The trip to the semifinals is the second for the Rams in as many years. The school is tucked away in a small town in the Eastern Panhandle, but like other small towns across the country, the success of their school’s sports teams is something many of the locals rally around.

“I’ve been to every single game, I haven’t missed a game,” Shepherd University student and student section leader Amelia Jenkins said. “I was in Connecticut when we started and I’ll be in Colorado on Saturday to cheer on the Rams.”

Fans like Jenkins were outside the school’s student center Thursday afternoon to see the team off in hopes for a road win against the Colorado School of Mines.

The team is led by quarterback Tyson Bagent, who was last season’s recipient of the Harlon Hill trophy – Division II football’s answer to the Heisman, which names the best player in the country. This season, he broke the record for most career touchdown passes in college football history, regardless of division.

“It’s good to know that all the work’s not going unnoticed,” Bagent said. “Also, I think it’s important for the younger people in my family to see what’s possible and kind of give them inspiration and motivation to do their thing.”

After his Harlon Hill campaign, Bagent had offers to transfer to Division I schools like West Virginia University and the University of Maryland, but ultimately decided to stay close to home. Despite playing at a smaller school, he’s gotten attention from scouts as a potential NFL draft pick.

“I’m from this area, I’ve always lived in this area,” he said. “So I mean, it’s all I know. And so for me to be an inspiration and kind of a motivating factor to the people in this area means everything to me.”

The team’s success is in part because of its coaching staff, led by head coach Ernie McCook. He was a coordinator with the program for years before he took over from longtime coach Monte Cater in 2018. Cater had more wins than any other active coach across college football before his retirement. McCook has continued the team’s level of success, but credits it to the school’s commitment to athletics.

“I think athletics is the front porch of every university and our success on athletic play and the playing field helps open up our university to a lot of different people,” McCook said.

The Rams have kept competitive by recruiting from local high school football powerhouses like Martinsburg High School, where Bagent was originally spotted.

“Seventy five percent of our alumni will live within 100 miles of the university,” he said. “So we’re able to have a lot of alumni support to help us and support us in recruiting.”

This year’s postseason saw Shepherd University beat the University of New Haven, as well as conference foes Slippery Rock and Indiana University of Pennsylvania. IUP handed the Rams a rare loss earlier in the season during the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference championship game.

Last season, the Rams beat the University of Findlay, Notre Dame College in Ohio and Kutztown University on their way to the semifinals before falling to eventual champions Ferris State University.

The semifinal game is scheduled for 3:30 p.m. Saturday and will be broadcast on streaming service ESPN Plus.

Annual Shepherdstown Theater Festival Returns With Live Performances

The Contemporary American Theater Festival in Shepherdstown was one of many live cultural events around the state to balance safely entertaining audiences with working around COVID-19 last summer. This month, the festival has fully returned to its regular live performances.

After postponing its yearly rotation of plays in 2020, the festival made a partial return in 2021. Organizers held outdoor events, released behind-the-scenes YouTube videos, and adapted plays as audio dramas.

Now that the six shows originally slated for the 2020 season are finally being debuted as full-fledged performances, Producing Artistic Director Peggy McKowen says there’s a feeling that the Eastern Panhandle’s cultural life is returning.

“It is a really nostalgic kind of moment for us at CATF to go through this transition and produce this work this summer. And it is really heartwarming to know that these audiences are still supporting us,” McKowen said.

She said there had been some uncertainty in the process of bringing the works to life. Staff had to overcome economic uncertainty and take care of mental health during production. Because of the amount of time between when the festival started work on the plays in 2020 and when the live performances debuted in 2022, much of the plays’ personnel also ended up changing.

“As time evolved, we lost some of those initiating members of the team. Of the six plays, only one of the directors has stayed through the process from 2020 to 2022,” McKowen said. “So we have five new directors who came on at various moments throughout the last two years. That’s been very interesting, because they bring a different perspective to the play, even though we had some shape to the play already.”

The festival is running six different plays through the end of the month, including:

Whitelisted by Chisa Hutchinson
The Fifth Domain by Victor Lesniewski
Babel by Jacqueline Goldfinger
Ushuaia Blue by Caridad Svich
The House of the Negro Insane by Terence Anthony
Sheepdog by Kevin Artigue

Information about the plays and their showtimes can be found on CATF’s website.

Climate Leadership Event Brings Indigenous Students To Shepherdstown

High schoolers of Indigenous backgrounds from all over the country arrived in the Eastern Panhandle last week for a leadership congress. The event focused on discussions of conservation and reducing the effects of climate change.

The Native Youth Climate Adaptation Leadership Congress, or NYCALC, is an annual event run by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. It takes place on the campus of the National Conservation Training Center, about ten minutes down the road from downtown Shepherdstown.

“It’s trying to establish that federal agencies are invested in Indigenous youth and help them address climate resiliency issues in their homelands,” said Jennifer Hill, Native Youth Coordinator with the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Scott Aikin, the service’s National Native American Programs Coordinator, says the event’s theme of climate change is one that resonates with Native communities.

“We have permafrost melting, we have shoreline erosion, we have islands that are being inundated. And these indigenous communities, oftentimes, are overlooked and underrepresented in the broader discussion,” Aikin said.

Each year, organizers pose a “big question” to its attendees involving how to tackle climate change. This year, students were asked to think of ways to mitigate its effects using a combination of Indigenous knowledge and Western science.

Audrey-Rose Sevaaetasi, who traveled to Shepherdstown from American Samoa, was part of a group of students that looked at the issue from the lens of culture, tradition, and spirituality.

“We came up with basically having Indigenous people educate Westerners, colonizers, or non-Indigenous people on how to fully appreciate nature and land the same way that we do,” Sevaaetasi said.

(from left to right) Scott Aikin, Jennifer Hill, Azriel Montoya, and Audrey-Rose Sevaaetasi.

The purpose of NYCALC isn’t just to have these discussions – it’s also to empower Native youth. Azriel Montoya, a student from New Mexico, says her experience made her feel comfortable and proud of her Native background.

“I’ve always had that kind of identity crisis where I was ashamed to be Native for a little bit,” Montoya said. “And like, I felt really bad about it. But now, interacting with all these people who are so proud of it, now I am too. In a way, I kind of figured out who I am.”

Aikin also points out that the learning styles of many Native students differ drastically from the mainstream.

“Many of those students have come from backgrounds that have a lot of existing trauma that still affects them, and we’re bringing students to a safe environment where they can begin to address some of those,” Aikin said. “We’re not here to solve those problems. We’re here to let them express them and get them out, however they see best to do so.”

The congress is the first time many of the students have been this far away from home, but Aikin says the event is unique in that it gives its students a growth of awareness in who they are and who they can become.

“It’s to recognize what is often, in our society, overlooked: that we have stellar students within our native communities who need opportunity to express the gifts they have,” Aikin said.

Shepherdstown Vigil Organized After Overturn Of Roe V. Wade

Vigils and protests across the state were mobilized by organizations like Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union following Friday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade.

Vigils and protests across the state were mobilized by organizations like Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union following Friday’s Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade.

One such vigil was organized in the Eastern Panhandle’s Shepherdstown. This particular event was organized by Emily Baker, a student at Shepherd University and president of the school’s Students for Reproductive Rights organization.

“Just this morning, I had to put it all together, had to find a place,” Baker said. “Since it was so last minute, I was nervous that nobody was going to show up. But luckily, Planned Parenthood sent me all of the supplies and information that I needed. And I just kind of sent out the troops on social media.”

Shepherdstown is right next to the Maryland border, where the right to an abortion is guaranteed by state law. But in West Virginia, the process is likely to be banned, with a century-old law that would make it a felony being unenforced until now. There is some debate as to whether it can be enforced, but Attorney General Patrick Morrissey has said he will deliver an opinion in the coming days. An amendment to the state’s constitution was also approved in 2018 stating that nothing in the document guarantees the right to abortion.

Concerned locals from the region came to the vigil, all with their own reason for attending. That includes Melanie Kozak, a worker at a local domestic violence and rape crisis center.

“Reproductive coercion is real, people force people to have sex without protection, they get pregnant, they can’t leave. It’s just another barrier, limiting my clients’ access to leaving an unhealthy, unsafe relationship,” Kozak said.

Others were concerned for more personal reasons, including Katrina Fernandez, who attended the vigil with her five daughters.

“Anything could happen. And whatever happens should be between my daughter, myself, and my family. And this should be our choice,” Fernandez said. “And I don’t believe anybody, especially the state, government, or anybody else has the right to tell me or them what we need to do with our bodies.”

Gov. Jim Justice said in a release that he is in favor of the Supreme Court’s decision and that he would declare a special session if clarifying state law is necessary. A larger rally for reproductive rights is planned at the capitol building in Charleston on July 9.