You may have seen her on the front cover of The DePauw or as a contestant on D3TV’s the Bachelor, this week’s Campus Celebrity is first-year Janeya Cunningham and she is making her mark on campus.
HC: Hey girl, thanks for taking the time to let me interview you today! First off, give me a little bio on yourself.
CC: Well, my name is Janeya. I am a first year student from Chicago. I want to major in political science and go to law school after I graduate from DePauw to become a lawyer. I am also interested in community service and social justice issues.
HC: Cool, so what are you involved in?
CC: I dance with XCell and I like to play volleyball in my other free time. I’m also a Bonner Scholar and a Posse Scholar.
HC: Nice! So as a freshman, how to you balance all your activities and school work?
CC: Well first of all, I always have to be doing something extra in order to keep my grades up. So, I like to be overly involved because that’s what keeps my grades up. Its weird (laughs). I remember one semester in high school I didn’t do anything but go to school and go home and I didn’t get the grades that I knew I could get. As soon I started back up in programs, my grades went up. So basically being involved makes me feel like I have to work for something and helps me easily keeps my grades up.
HC: Yeah that makes sense! So I’ve heard about a peace campaign that you started back home, can you tell me a little bit more about that?
CC: Yeah! In Chicago, specifically the southeast side where I am from, there is a lot of gun violence and gang violence. I had of friends that were affected by gun violence in some kind of way, whether it was a friend of theirs or a family member or them. It was just too much. At my high school I had teacher and founders who were very supported of us as students and what we wanted to do, so I came up with the idea to have a peace movement and with that came a campaign for a documentary for people to see what we were doing for our movement. We use the website called Kickstarter and we raised $35,000 to film. A company called New Chapter filmed the documentary and from there we started to do premiers. But, in order to get the money, we had to do interviews on the radio and with local news station, stuff like that. It was a really humbling experience. It was a lot of fun and a lot of hard work. We had meetings all the time. I had to be pulled from class a lot, but at the end of the day the cause of me doing that was to raise awareness about the violence that happens in the city of Chicago.
HC: That’s really awesome! So does this related at all to what you want to do in the future?
CC: Um, a little bit. Every time I tell someone who’s a lawyer this, they think it is a great way to for me to become a lawyer. They say I can be a lawyer for social justice issues or help people in violent situations. I don’t know, I don’t really know how it relates, but I always going to do it [social justice] as a side job.
HC: Cool, so what’s your favorite thing about DePauw so far?
CC: Oh wow, umm…You know I think my favorite thing about DePauw is the support from the students. I think it would be a whole other ball game if I got here and didn’t feel any support for the student. Specifically, the upperclassmen they go out of their way to make sure that the freshmen are comfortable here and that we’re enjoying it here. And like if we miss home, we have people to talk to. I think the outpour of support from upperclassmen makes me feel better everyday. You know, I miss home a lot and I have problem making friends here sometimes, but just knowing that the upperclassmen, they love us, makes me happy.
HC: Aw that’s sweet. Okay so, last question. What’s something you look forward to during your four years here?
CC: This might be corny, but I look forward to becoming a better writer. I feel like DePauw can really really help me with that, being a liberal arts school and the writing center. I know writing is big here. I love to write, I’m not a creative writer, but I think it will help me a lot in my career if can improve my writing. A lot of my professors are saying they see potential in me for writing, so hopefully they can bring that out of me. I’m very open to critiques.
HC: Alright well that’s all I have. Thanks again for sitting down with me today and letting me get to know more about you!
CC: No problem, thank you!
To see the trailer on Janeya’s peace movement and more information, click HERE.