TEDxUNC, delayed due to the water crisis, held its 2017 conference, “Home,” in Memorial Hall on Sunday.
This year’s conference was divided into four sub-themes: roots, boroughs, society and humanity.
“We thought about how we wanted the conference to progress, and we decided that we wanted the conference to go from small to big,” Saad Khan, senior and co-curator of TEDxUNC, said. “Then, we fleshed out these theme names based on what we wanted to focus on.”
With roots, the focus was on home in terms of where people put down their roots, individuality or identity. Boroughs was community-oriented and focused on issues such as urban planning and city planning. Society focused on the cultural aspects of home and humanity focused on large-scale global issues, Khan said.
Planning for the event is a nine- to ten-month process, Khan said. He said a committee to decide the theme of TEDxUNC has biweekly meetings, and they decide on a theme before the previous academic year is over. When they come back to school, the planning begins.
The talks this year ranged from subjects such as what home means to the increasing immigrant population in Siler City, North Carolina to people in Aleppo, Syria, and what happens when your home is taken from you. There were also musical performances from groups such as Baked Goods and UNC Bhangra Elite.
Writer Sam Peterson's talk “Detached From Self: Interior Homelessness” discussed the feeling of being homeless in your own body as a transgender person. He said the idea of home is critical right now.
“We’re in a place where we’re actually excluding people from home,” he said. “We save lives when we open ourselves up. It’s so important because people are dying. People are literally dying for want of a home, whether it’s like an idea of a home or a reality of a home.”
Martha Isaacs, a senior geography major and winner of the student speaker competition, spoke on exclusivity and privacy in homes and advocated for using homes as resources to help others rather than exclude them.
