Pit Talk series aims to spark conversations

=The Pit is considered the heart of UNC’s campus. Even on dreary, rainy days, the Pit is always bustling with busy people and interest groups, all with different backgrounds and perspectives. It is representative of the University community as a whole.

A group of creative UNC minds has come together on a mission to showcase that sense of community. The result of that mission is Pit Talk.

If you and your Tar Heel friends are active on social media, you’ve probably heard the buzz about it.

What started as a student government concept for a YouTube series has morphed into an initiative that aims to bring students together by showcasing UNC’s diverse population, encouraging dialogue on campus and challenging students to change their perspectives.

Pit Talk Creative Director Stuart Schrader and Co-Director Eunice Kim lead a team of seven students who take photos and create videos for Pit Talk’s various social media pages. Every week, Pit Talk’s Instagram and Facebook pages feature photos of three to four groups.

Kim, a sophomore public relations and public policy major, said she hopes Pit Talk will help students become more aware of the wide variety of interests and causes campus groups represent.

“Sometimes you don’t really know how many clubs there are at UNC,” Kim said.

Pit Talk’s Facebook page has already featured a variety of campus organizations, including Carolina For The Kids, Carolina Dining Services and the Organization for African Students’ Interests and Solidarity.

Pit Talk also plans to post videos every other Sunday, focusing on how national and local news affects UNC.

Pit Talk’s first video, posted on Oct. 2, already has over 15,000 views on Facebook.

Schrader, a senior political science and communication studies major, narrates the video. He explains that he was going to do a piece for UNC’s freestyle rap group, the Cypher, but doesn’t want to without first addressing the national tumult surrounding recent police shootings and the riots in Charlotte.

Schrader said he was partly inspired to make this video because Charlotte is his hometown.

The video emphasizes the importance of fostering a sense of community and discussing difficult topics in the wake of local and national tragedies — topics that are likely to come up in bustling community spaces like the Pit.

“I want to encourage the dialogue that we have on campus,” Schrader said. “And I want people to take a different perspective on issues that are relevant to them and their fellow students that they wouldn’t initially try to take.”

Schrader said he has been pleasantly surprised by the video’s success. He estimates that it has reached over 40,000 people across different modes of social media.

Student body feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, and Schrader said he intends to continue making videos that bring national issues to the local level of conversation.

“(The next video) is the perfect coalescence of a lot of stuff I’ve been seeing,” Schrader said. “It’s hard to articulate, but we are aiming to get these things that are just floating in the collective consciousness of students.”

First-year Kati Schy thinks these bi-weekly videos will be a great way for busy students to stay informed on important issues.

“I feel like mass media has gotten to be so manipulated,” Schy says. She hopes Pit Talk will encourage conversations between various groups on campus. “I know that Carolina has a lot of diverse perspectives.”

Garrett Merville, a sophomore public policy major, said he thinks Pit Talk has the potential to become an important piece of campus culture and positively affect how students perceive the world around them.

“I think a lot of times, it’s hard to contextualize and relate to what’s happening outside the UNC bubble,” he said. “I think the video did a really great job of that because it brought something that a lot of people know about on UNC’s campus, then related it to what was happening in Charlotte and how the UNC community fits into that.

“I think if Pit Talk keeps doing that, it could be a really invaluable thing to have on campus.”

@kaitlynbgreen

swerve@dailytarheel.com