Archives
TV show to highlight UB, South Campus neighborhood
By LAUREN NEWKIRK MAYNARD
Reporter Contributor
A half-hour television program, “Your UB: The South Campus Neighborhood,” will be broadcast at 8:30 p.m. July 20 on WNED’s ThinkBright TV (Time Warner Channel 21, digital channel 17.3).
Photography of campus life collected from the UB Archives will be featured in “Your UB: The South Campus Neighborhood.”
The program will repeat at noon every Sunday through Aug. 17 on Time Warner Channel 22.
Shot and edited by a crew from the Center for the Arts, the show uses past and present-day footage of the South Campus community and interviews with current neighborhood residents.
Photography collected from the UB Archives provides a nostalgic look at historic campus milestones and architecture, area landmarks and significant events and celebrity visitors to UB, including poet Robert Frost, Robert Kennedy and Elizabeth Taylor.
During Taylor’s famous four-day visit to Buffalo in 1957, she and her third husband, Mike Todd, presented UB with “Buster,” an angus bull that served as a live mascot and commemorated the city of Buffalo’s 125th anniversary.
Other images show snapshots of life on and off campus during the tumultuous 1960s and ’70s, when UB broke new ground, both on its North Campus and as a place for political protest and progressive civil rights.
“We wanted to show UB’s relationship to the surrounding neighborhoods and explain how both often reflected the changing times, attitudes and events in our nation’s history,” says Regina Ticco, a producer at the Center for the Arts who helped create the video.
The program also focuses on the future of the community. “UB is making a concerted effort to reconnect with campus neighbors, improve neighborhood safety and enrich our quality of life as it begins implementing its long-term growth plan,” says Vincent Clark, UB director of community relations and a South Campus area resident.
Recent campus-related activities featured in the video include the UB on the Green concert series, UB Paints and other neighborhood cleanups, the South Campus farmers market, the home loan program for UB employees and the many issues involved with UB 2020 and the plan to add students and faculty, and improve parking, green space and access to the South Campus.
“I’m very positive about the future,” says John Huber, whose family has owned O’Connell’s clothing store on Main Street since 1959. “Reading the plans President Simpson has for not only this campus, but the other two campuses as well, are very encouraging. It looks as though there will be an influx of not only professors but students to this area which can only help it thrive.”