Savannah Thorpe

"My end goal right now is public policy. I would love to be Governor someday. I have a huge heart for the minorities and underprivileged and people in the lower-rungs of socio-economic ladder. I find that in government that people who tend to advocate for them tend to speak with words that deal with emotion and feelings. Legislatures speak in graphs, numbers, and statistics. I want to be able to help bridge that so that we can more effectively communicate policies that better serve the underprivileged."

-Savannah Thorpe, Junior, English and Economics Dual Major

I’ve actually encountered the subject of this interview a number of times. First in a couple of social settings. Then she once served as a guest panel member for the Generation Gap TV show; during an episode in which our show addressed the issues of how African Americans are perceived today in American culture. I decided to see if I could get her to sit down and do an interview for the Faces of I.U.P. blog. After messaging her with my request, she agreed kindly. We arranged to meet last Saturday at the Crimson Café.

Once we had taken a seat at a table in the Fireplace Pizzeria, we sat down and discussed what the concept of my blog was about. Afterward the subject and I began conducting the interview. Unlike the others I interviewed previously, she didn’t wait for me to ask the simple questions such as her name or her major. Instead, upon my announcement we were recording she eagerly dove right in and said, “My name is Savannah Thorpe. I’m a junior here at I.U.P. I am an English-Econ dual-bach and I have minors in Applied Statistics and Biology.”

Not even five seconds into the interview and I was already amazed. I knew about her dual-bach having worked on the show, but I couldn’t hearing about her minors. In an impressed tone I said, “Wow! You’re very sophisticated.”

She chuckled and exclaimed, “I’m not though! That’s the thing! I have a broad interest all over the place and I want to be equipped for what I want to do in the future. I’ve got the time and I got the credits, I might as well.”

“How did you start on all those paths?” I asked her.

“When I was in high school,” she began to explain, “I’m a writer by nature- but I always loved math and science. They’re just other means of communicating. When I came to college I asked my Dad, ‘What do you think I should study?’

“My Dad went on to tell me, ‘Well you might really like Economics because you love storytelling and you like math.’

“I said to him, ‘Money is the root of all evil, Dad! Absolutely not!’

“So as a compromise I picked up a Small-Business Management major. I took one semester of it and I hated it!” She exclaimed those words as if they were foul in taste. “I switched to English afterward, but I didn’t just want an English degree since it was very narrow. I started taking some statistic classes. I stumbled into a Gen Ed course called the Principles of Statistic Microbiotics. The kid who sat next to me there took Calculus III with me- and we turned to each other and exclaimed, ‘This stuff is awesome! This is like real, live, math that we can actually make happen!’

“We stayed after and talked to our professor one day after class and we were like, ‘What you said makes sense. This would make more sense though if you used Calculus, not just Algebra.’

“He said to us, ‘It would, but this is a basic-level course. If you guys are interested you should take my Calculus-level of this course.’

“That was how my friend and I both picked up an Econ major.”

She went on and told me, “What I want to be able to do is to be able to translate the scientific-economic terms into ordinary words that regular people can understand, and vice-versa. My end goal right now is public policy. I would love to be Governor someday. I have a huge heart for the minorities and underprivileged and people in the lower-rungs of the socio-economic ladder. I find that in government that people who tend to advocate for them tend to speak with words that deal with emotion and feelings. Legislatures speak in graphs, numbers, and statistics. I want to be able to help bridge that so that we can more effectively communicate policies that better serve the underprivileged.”

I was impressed. “We definitely need people like you,” I told her. “I’ll admit it, when it comes to that kind of thing I only understand in lay-man’s terms. Numbers are good and all, but I need people to help me interpret them.”

She nodded. “That’s what I have found when I take Economic and Statistics classes- which are even worse! Once you start to realize what’s happening- you can tell a story. You can take the numbers and translate them into a narrative. My Math major friends have described statistics as taking numbers and telling a story with them. That’s all it is! So everything I do I approach with a storytelling perspective.”

“Nice!” I complimented, pretty impressed. However, I decided to switch gears a little bit just to see if I could get a little more of her back-story down. I went on and asked her, “How did you come to I.U.P.?”

“I came here almost completely on accident,” she told me. “My family was on our way out visiting Carnegie Mellon. My Dad is an engineer so by nature he wants to gather information and crunch data. 

"He said, ‘You know, I wonder what happens to our Pennsylvania students who are really, really bright but want to go to a state school and not some liberal arts college?’ He was poking around and he stumbled upon the Honors College here. He said, ‘You know it’s almost on our way. Let’s stop by- it couldn’t hurt.’

“I was like, ‘You know what Dad? You’re right. It couldn’t hurt.’

“We took a visit and I fell in love with the place. They offered me so much money to come here. It made so much sense! They gave me a big university feel- with a football team, and all the concerts and shows- but at the same time I had the tiny Liberal Arts field that Whitmyre has to offer. I couldn’t have asked for more!”

“So you’re in the Honors College?” I asked her.

“I am!” she exclaimed, “People talk bad about it but I love it. I mean there’s problems with the administration and there’s problems with the way the classes are handled. I think though that what the Honors College has to offer is something different. We are able to have some deep discussions with our friends moderated by a professional. We can all- I think as we mature- realize that there are people of sane mind and sound judgment, who- with different experiences and information- came to an opinion that is completely different from yours. What the Honors College allows you to do is to follow what led people to the opinion that they have. That’s a skill we all need to develop more. I feel that if we as students or even as people developed that more; we wouldn’t be so quick to name-call or blame a person’s stupidity for their opinions. That’s often not the case! There are very intelligent people with very different opinions. It doesn’t make them wrong. It just means that they have access to different information and life experiences. So yeah, it just allows you to follow through on that. I love it!

“Also,” she added, “They treat us Honors College kids like royalty! I have taken classes that I haven’t had the pre-requisites for, that were for, and that were only for majors and minors. I just took them all. I say ‘So I want to take this class...,’ and they’re like, ‘Sure! Whatever!’ I once took a class in Graphic Design. I didn’t have to, I’m not an Art major and the class is full and I had zero of the three pre-requisites. I took it anyway! At I.U.P., anything is possible with the right person’s signature! It has yet to fail me!”

I laughed and asked, “How long are you going to be in school for all the studies you have to take?” 

“I’m getting out in four years. I made it all work. I came into school with a bunch of AP credits. I took a ton of classes that I thought were cool.” She laughed as she said, “I scrambled around some classes and I’m going to be getting a degree in a year. Well, here’s to hoping anyway. That’s the plan for now!

“I was actually worried about that,” she went on to tell me, “I said to my Dad, ‘What am I going to do? I have to feed myself someday.’

“He told me, ‘Don’t you worry about that. Determined people, friendly people, intelligent people, get jobs! While you’re in college, take stuff you like to take! You’re going to get a job, don’t worry about that now. Worry about getting knowledge and experiences. You’re a driven, intelligent and generally likeable person. The job will come.’

“Needless to say I listened to him, because my Dad works in Human Resources. All he does all day is hire people. So I took him at his word.”

Her mentioning of Human Resources got me thinking about how she had mentioned she had a passion for the underprivileged and minority groups. I decided to go on and ask her, “How did you first get involved in social justice movements?”

She didn’t hesitate. “On one hand it’s honestly always been a part of me. I’m biracial, my Dad is Black and my Mom is White. It was a huge deal when they got married in 1990- it was still illegal in some states to do that. My Mom’s family was so upset, they didn’t show up to the wedding. Her brother had to walk her down the aisle. Her Mom and Dad didn’t come. My parents were very hardcore! They’re still married twenty-five years later and they still love each other! Just coming from that badass marriage- I like to joke about stupid things that Dr. King would have marched for- but that’s actually something he did! That kind of stuff should be legal! Just that being a part of me, my family, and our legacy is something that I cherish.

“Then what happened in Ferguson hit me super-hard. I realized just after that went down how much people don’t understand. It’s difficult to parse out the truth between what the media dramatizes, and the systematic corruption in government. I hadn’t realized until then. I realized that that’s something we need to talk about. The indictment of former officer Darren Wilson will go down as history will write it, but I think that just opened up a slew of problems. One that comes to mind is the ability to vote, and how the media makes it difficult for us to make informed decisions. Healthcare is abysmal, the food, and simple things like that which aren’t accessible to communities. How sad is that? We want to blame the obese, but all they can afford is bad food! It’s harder to afford helpful foods that won’t contribute to you digging into your healthcare. There’s a whole slew of problems that feed into each other. Will I be able to solve them all? Absolutely not! There’s only one of me. If nothing else I want to inform and inspire more people to contribute and try fixing the problems. Among those being better representation in media. We need more positive Black role-models in media. As well as the right to vote, that one is so urgent!”

“Going off of better representation of various kinds of people in media,” I said, “do you think we’re doing better at that, or are we stagnant?”

“I think there’s two schools of thought on that,” Savannah told me. “On the one hand there are more Black people on television. Just statistically, that’s the numbers. Which makes it tempting to say ‘Go us! We’re so diverse!’

“The representation of them is so abysmal though! We have thugs running around and shooting each other up- which is one representation. Or you have the Empire side of things where it’s nothing but people from the ‘hood who don’t know how to handle so much money- so they go hog-wild: ridiculously materialistic, unwarranted and unprotected sex with unmarried people. So while there are statistically more Black people on the screen- they’re not helping. You can point fingers at whoever, but we need more positive role models. I want to see Lupita Nyong’o as the main character in some pithy rom-com, because you either get Tyler Perry movies, or you get White people. I want to see more something along the former’s lines.

“Mixed kids are doing great on the screen right now- there’s a ton of us! I can’t complain about that. There’s a lot more work to do, but I think because we’re finally starting to make some noise that it’s going to have to happen. If not for anyone else, we have to do it for Black people. The ones who mainly consume those terrible images of Black people are White people. White people won’t make a ton of money selling terrible images of Black people to both White and Black people.”

“Do you feel that there are more accurate portrayals of people of minority groups in the media?”

“Oh sure! I think there is more positive representation working its way up. I think the most influential side of that is how viciously the media has attacked people promoting bad images. The scandal with Zendaya Coleman at the Oscars- where that White woman said that her hair probably smelled like oil and weed- people started flipping out. Saying how it was racist and rude. Everyone was praising Kylie Jenner and her dreads, but let a Black woman have them and she probably smells like oil and weed! (Are you kidding me?) The whole media avalanche practically killed that woman. The thing that happened with ZAE, nobody came to their defense. Zero people! While that’s not really the same as representation in media- I think the fact that we’re not tolerating that shows we’re trying to move forward.”

“You’re a strong proponent of the Black Lives Matter movement,” I said, “are there any other movements that you’re passionate about?”

“I’m very passionate about Black Lives Matter of course. I think we need to be more informed as voters. I don’t know if there’s a hashtag for that rolling around, but basically I say do your research and vote! I think I always identify as a feminist. I think that word has become real deceitful though because that has so many waves and versions of it. None of which that are wrong. I always get excited because February is Black History Month and March is Women’s History Month. It’s great! I feel like I get two months in a row. It’s a lot easier though to unify 13% of the United States population, than it is half of the United States under one umbrella."

She went on to explain her position further, “All Black people- whether you’re a CEO or a single mom of three kids- we all feel that we need better representation and this and that. Not that I’m a spokesperson of the Black community- but we’re all sort-of on the same page with how we need better representation in the media. When it comes to women though- there’s so many more of us! I’m all about the feminist movement! I’m for a more hopeful feminism though. I subscribe to Black feminism. Black feminism and White feminism are different. CEO feminism and single-mom feminism are very different. There’s nothing wrong with either, but oftentimes those groups fight among each other and that’s why I feel feminism gets a bad rap. Which is sad because it’s such an important movement. I don’t know a word to describe it but I feel we need to have more discussion within the different branches of feminism. It’s not good that when there’s differences that they bash one another. That’s not okay. Women need to rise up for other women.”

I decided to go on and see what more I could learn about her desire to get into politics. “You said that you’re looking into politics and possibly becoming a governor. What made you decide it was something you wanted to go into?”

“I think that politics is one of the very few forums that we have which we can have these kinds of discussions in a way we can legislate them. You can have all the hashtags you want on tumblr, and that’s not going to do very much unless you start enacting the legislature and getting it into the community. That’s not going to happen unless we look at statistics and crunch data and do all the nerdy stuff. Hashtags are almost useless to that kind of thing. While I’m all about what you can do with social media and getting all the people from around to follow the movement, you have to get boots on the ground. That’s why I picked up this major in economics. That’s why I want to get into politics.”

Laughing, she said, “Plus, power-suits are cool! I want to spend the rest of my life wearing power-suits!”

We talked for a few more minutes about various issues and ideas. However, we soon drew the interview to a close. Savannah had a rap battle that she wanted to see, and I had my own errands I had to run.

I thanked her for sitting down with me and allowing me to interview her, and reassured her that that were some great stuff for me to work with.

I can honestly say that Savannah is a pretty impressive individual of I.U.P. She not only has sass, but she is knowledgeable and she knows how to stand up for what she believes in. As I’m writing this, I won’t deny that I admire her spirit and her drive. Wherever life decides to take Savannah, I hope that same passion continues to burn within her. Passion, commitment and knowledge are something that this world could definitely use. Whether the reader may agree with her statements or not, we have to give her that at least.

Unfortunately, we have reached the end of this piece. I did have a lot of fun writing it though. As always, be sure to keep checking back because there’s still more stories to learn, and more faces to shed some light on here at I.U.P.

Until next time, catch you all later!