While playing one of her original songs, titled “Arrows,” Brenna Lynn stopped for a moment and thought about ways she could include her passion for music into her busy schedule as a college student. “I’m in school, kind of grumbling about it at all times, doing everything I’m supposed to be doing; following directions with my nose in a book,” Lynn thought. “And all I want to do is play music.” Putting her guitar down, Lynn told herself to break the rules and do something in life that she wants to do: create music while in school. After that moment, Lynn began researching the process of self-producing music. Lynn recently performed at Akron’s Got Talent, which was hosted by ZPN, singing “Royals” by Lorde. As one of her musical inspirations, Lynn views Lorde as a powerful songwriter. Nonetheless, Lynn prefers to write original lyrics and compose her own music because she feels her emotions and personality are then better expressed. Lynn said she has been writ...

On Saturday, April 21,  E.J. Thomas Hall will be hosting the Akron Symphony Orchestra who will be performing award-winning composer and Oscar winner, John Williams’ score from “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” in concert at 1 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Warner Bros. and CineConcerts announced the global Harry Potter Film Concert Series in early 2017 and the series celebrates the wizarding world that J.K. Rowling has created. With this unique concert experience, audiences can relive the magic of “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” which will play in HD on a large screen while the Akron Symphony performs the score simultaneously. “Harry Potter is synonymous with excitement around the entire world and we hope that by performing this incredible music with the full movie, audiences will enjoy returning to this world, and to the many wonderful characters that inhabit it,” Brady Beaubien of CineConcerts and concert producer for The Harry Potter Film Concert Series sai...

Originally founded in the fall of 2010 by Dr. Dale Mugler, a previous Dean of the Honors College, Kanga Blue is one of the three a cappella groups and the only all-female group at The University of Akron. Dr. Mugler started Kanga Blue after realizing there was “a lack of opportunities for female singers” on campus and there were limited member positions available in the coed a cappella group, Victoria Schurr, President of Kanga Blue, said. The initial goal of Kanga Blue was to provide a space on campus where female-singers would have the opportunity to get together and practice singing and performing in an informal setting. “Then as more members wanted to take it on, they wanted to make it something bigger than that,” fourth-year student, Annie Mizner, Secretary and Head of the Decorating Committee for Kanga Blue, said. However, it wasn’t until April of 2014, when the members of Kanga Blue performed their first biannual concert, that The University of Akron recognized the grou...

On March 14, New York Times best-selling author, Rebecca Traister came to The University of Akron to speak about her book, “All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation.” The event, hosted by The University of Akron Women’s Studies program, provided a discussion about how marriage has affected women and society throughout history. At the lecture, Traister said that she first got the idea for this book when she got engaged to be married at the age of 35 and realized that people were treating her like she was just entering adulthood. Traister stated that before she was an author, she was a feminist journalist for many years writing about changing marriage rates in the United States, so she had some prior knowledge of this topic but had not investigated it to this extent before writing her book.   This event caused Traister to begin seeing just how archaic some of our practices surrounding how we treat couples entering marriage still are. Traister ...

On Saturday, March 10, the Rock Mill, located on Carroll Street, hosted their second Ladies’ Night. The goal of this event was to introduce women to the world of rock climbing and to get them excited about the sport. The event was held after the Rock Mill’s normal closing time on Saturday, and only women were invited to attend. “The idea behind Ladies’ Night is to just give women an opportunity to come and try out climbing in a less intimidating space and to really experience the community of women climbers that we already have here. It’s so awesome to me to see our members who come to this event just to share their love of climbing with the women who are experiencing it for the first time,” Liz Yokum, Co-Founder of the Rock Mill, said. While the event was mainly focused on having its attendees free climb for the majority of the time there was also a group yoga warm-up at the beginning of the event and some of the more seasoned Rock Mill climbers offered demonstrations...